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MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY

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By the same Author.

STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. Published by arrangement wilh
the author. One vol., xamo., cloth, new and cheap edition^ pt.$o

A COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES TO THE SEVEN
CHURCHES IN ASIA. Published by arrangement with the
author. One vol., zamo., cloth, $^-V>

SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Fint Part. One
vol., zamo., cloth $1-25

THE SAME. Second Series. Published by arrangement with
the author. One vol., zamo., $^-^S

ENGLISH, PAST AND PRESENT. Eight Lectuies. Seventh
Edition. Revised and Improved. One vol., zamo., . Iz.50

%• For Sale by all Booksellers ^ or tent, postage Paid, by I

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. I

743 dt 745 Broadway, Ifew Tark, \

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LECTURES

MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY

BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF LECTURES DELIVERED
AT QUEEN'S COLLEGE, LONDON

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.

ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN

NEW YOBK:
CHARLES SCBIBNER'S SONS,

■U0GU8OB8 TO

SCRIBNBR, ARMSTBONG k Ca

1878.

Ai/ right* r*terv«d.

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GRANT, PAIRBS * RODGSRS,

BLBCTROTTPERS AND PRUTTBRS^

FHIUADSLPHIA.

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•T72/

PREFACE.

I DEU\^ERED a good many years ago, and more times than
one, courses of Lectures on Church History to a class of
girls, at Queen's College, London. One course dealt with
Early Church History, another with Modem, and between
these was one on Medieval. This last course has constituted
the groundwork of the present volume, published by request
of hearers, but those hearers, as I must acknowledge, my own
daughters. I had intended at the first to do no more than
print the Lectures as delivered, with some slight occasional
revision ; and certainly had very imperfectly recognized how
much more than this would be required. Little by little I
became conscious that my present estimate of persons and of
things was not always what it once had been, that later books
demanded to be read, and later knowledge used ; not to say
that it was one thing to address a class of young ladies ; who,
however little one might know oneself upon a subject, were
tolerably sure to know less ; and another, to lay oneself open
to the criticism of all comers. It has followed that much has
been re-written, something withdrawn, not a little added. But
with all this I have not sought to disconnect these Lectures
from the place where they were first given and the hearers to
whom they were first addressed. My general view of the
manner in which a certain acquaintance with Church history

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vi PREFACE.

may be imparted to those who cannot make of it a special study,
has not changed. What I then thought to be a better scheme
for the distribution of the materials, than such schemes as are
generally adopted, I think so still ; — ^but on this and on other
kindred subjects I have said something in an Introductory
Lecture, which went before my entire subject, but which I
have now prefixed to this present division of it, as being the
only one that I shall publish. Not less have I kept the Lec-
tures, in what they say and in what they do not say, as orig-
inally they were composed, namely as Lectures for girls of the
upper and middle classes; and I have recognized here and
there certain reticences and restraints of statement which this
assumption of the age and sex of my hearers imposed upon
me. More than this I have not considered that this circum-
stance required.

Bishop Blomfield, indeed, is reported to have excused a
popular preacher, when some strong-thoughted la\vyers com-
plained that there was not sufficient body and resistance in his
sermons ; urging, that he had preached so long to bonnets as
to have forgotten there were brains. I cannot think the
antithesis of bonnets and brains to be a just one. How far the
wearers of bonnets would bear the strain of competition with
those thus assumed to be in exclusive possession of brains,
supposing the matter in hand to be one which demanded
originative power, on this I give no opinion ; but having
regard to receptive capacity, to the power of taking in, assimi-
lating, and intelligently reproducing, what is set before them,
my conviction after some experience in lecturing to the young
of both sexes is, that there is no need to break the bread of
knowledge smaller for young women than young men ; and,
save as already indicated, I did not in the original preparation
of these Lectures, nor yet have I in the later revision of them,

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PREFACE. vii

because my class was, or was assumed to be, a female one,
kept anything back that I should have thought it desirable to
set before young men of the same age and condition of life.

I had written so far in a somewhat anticipatory mood ; for
less than half my book was completed, although the scheme
of it was fully made out, when I thus wrote. It has been
finished under less favourable circumstances than those under
which it was begun. Many hindrances, the results of a severe
accident, have stood in my way. Every book not upon my
own shelves which I have needed to consult, has had to be
brought to me; I could not go to seek it; and this condition
lunits not a little the number which one has at command.
As however I publish the Lectures notwithstanding, which I
was under no sort of obligation to-dp^ I have no right on the
score of these hindrances to ask a more lenient judgment on
the faults and shortcomings of my book than it otherwise
might have found.

Palace, Dublin: Narv, 26, 1877.

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CONTENTS.

LKTUIkB. PAG«.

I. On the Study of Church History i

11. The Middle Ages beginning 14

III. The Conversion of England 29

rV. Islam . ; 46

^XT V. The Conversion of Germany . | 60 >^

VL The Holy Roman Empire 77

Vn. The Iconoclasts 89

r^v, VIII. MoNASTiasM 102 (^

— IX. Hildebrand 116

X. The Crusades 13a

XI. The Papacy at its Height 149

XII. The Popes and the Hohenstaufen 168

XIII. The Eucharistic Co^jtroversies of the Middle

Ages 186

XIV. The EIarlier Schoolmen 200

XV. The Sects of the Middle Ages 213

XVI. The Mendicant Orders 228

XVII. TheTValdenses 247

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X CONTENTS.

LBCTVRS. PAQB.

XVIII. The Schoolmen and the Mendicants .... 263

V XIX. The Babylonish Captivity 277

"* XX. The Great Councils of the West 290

XXI. WiCLIF AND THE LOLLARDS 306

XXII. Hus AND Bohemia 321

XXIII. Offences 336

XXIV. The German Mystics 352

XXV. Latin and Greek 366

XXVI. The Revival of Learning 382

XXVII. Christian Art in the Middle Ages .... 395

XXVIII. Aspects of Christian Life and Work in the

Middle Ages . 411

XXIX. The Eve of the Reformation 427

INDEX 441

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LECTURES

MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY.

LECTURE I.

ON THE STUDY OF .CHURCH HISTORY. '

In the study of any vast and complex subject, above
all when it is one on which we can bestow only a very
limited portion of our time and attention, which there-
fore it is quite impossible we can master in all its de-
tails, it is all-important for us that we should know
beforehand what we should look for, on what con-
centrate our attention; what, as of real significance for
us, we should keep in the foreground of our thoughts;
what, as of secondary interest, we may allow to fall
into the background; what, as indeed of no impor-
tance at all, we may dismiss and suffer to fall out of
sight altogether. Our faculties are so limited, our
memories can retain so little, the claims on our time
are so infinite, art is so long and life so short, that all
such economies of time and labour are precious, and
can nowhere be superfluous or out of place. But
hardly anywhere can they be so valuable, indeed I
should say they are nowhere so indispensable, as in
the study of Church history. The subject is so im-

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ON THE STUDY

mense, extending over so large a tract of time, over
such vast regions of space, having its points of contact
with so much of deepest interest in every other domain
of human activity, demanding to be looked at from so
many different points of view, while at the same time
it affects so closely our own position, and even our
own conduct, that we may well desire, if such can be
obtained, some preparatory helps to its study, some
touchstone which shall enable to discriminate and dis-
cern between that which is most worth our knowing,
and that which is of less worth, and that which is of no
worth at all.

I must complain of those who have written our
Church histories, that they are often very far from
helping us here as they ought. One is sometimes
tempted to make against them the same complaint
which the countryman made, who, having gone to see
for the first time some famous city, complained on his
return home that he could not see the city for the
houses. This has been sometimes cited as a very
foolish saying, but it expressed a very real fact; and,
looked at a Httle closely, there was nothing absurd
about it, but what indeed was very much the contrary.
What he felt that he wanted was a total impression,
with the great distinctive features of the city rising up
before him ; and this, lost amid a labyrinth of streets
and lanes, and with no one to guide and place him on
some station of vantage, he felt that he had been un-
able to obtain. Now there are Church histories about
which one might make a similar complaint The
writers of these have so crowded their pages with
smaller events, have so little aimed at giving due
prominence to the greater, have so filled their stage

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OF CHURCH HISTORY.

with secondary and subordinate personages, that the
really grand events and grand actors are in danger of
being lost in the crowd ; we fail to distinguish them
from the multitude of far inferior importance, or of no
importance whatever, who distract or obstruct our
view. We cannot see the city for the houses.

Neither is the way of escape from this inconvenience
so easy. If, hoping to avoid it, we betake ourselves
to abridgments, saying to ourselves, "These at any
rate, by the very necessity of the case, will deal only
with what is primary, with what is worth remembering,"
we shall probably be quite disappointed in any ex-
pectation of the kind. ' Not to say that these abridg-
ments are very often hungry, barren, dry skeletons
from which all that constitutes the flesh and blood of
history has been ruthlessly stript away ; not to urge
that they often justify too well the medieval proverb,
Compendia Dispendia, we may very probably encounter
in them the same mischief which we were labouring to
avoid, and this in a more aggravated form. Shut up
in closer limits, the writers have not the less sought to
include a little of every thing and a notice of every
body within these. Painting on a much narrower can-
vas, they have introduced into their picture almost as
many figures as did those others into the ampler
spaces at their command. And thus in these com-
pendiums the same defects will often exist, and in a
still more mischievous shape.

Let me say boldly that in my judgment the first
question which one with such a task as mine, and shut
in for the performance of it within such narrow limits,
should ask himself is this, — not " How much can I put
into my story?" but rather, "What can I omit, and

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ON THE STUDY

yefat the same time effectually tell that story? What
can I throw overboard, so lightening the sorely bur-
dened ship, at the same time retaining, if not all of the
freight which is precicius^ yet at all events whatever of
that is most precious ?" This is the question which in
these Lectures I shall constantly put to myself; and
shall seek to answer it on the principles which I have
already suggested. Instead of multiplying details,
which, if you wish to know them, you may obtain
almost anywhere, I shall endeavour to put you at
points of view for the taking in of those larger aspects
of the subject which more or less determine and domi-
nate the whole. You must not wonder or complain
if, having such a story to tell, with so few hours in
which to tell it, I omit, foreshorten, trace oudines only,
leaving to you to fill in these frameworks at your
leisure. Then only you would have ground for com-
plaint, if I wasted on trivialities, such as would inevit-
ably be forgotten almost as soon as heard, the brief
time which we have at our disposal.

But there are other devices — ^technical and mechani-
cal some of them will appear — which may yet mate-
rially assist you in obtaining a clearer oversight oT
your subject, with mastery up to a certain point of it,
and of the relations of its several parts to one another.
For instance, there is the distribution of it into periods
of manageable length. None of the kingdoms of this
world have a history extending over a tract of time at
all approaching that over which this history of the
kingdom of God extends. And indeed how should
they have this? Those other kingdoms rise but to
fall ; while this is a kingdom which endures throughout

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OF CHURCH HISTORY.

all ages, having already endured for more than eighteten
hundred years. It is needful then in the study of such
a history to secure pauses for the mind, "landing-
places," as Coleridge has called them. You may fairly
claim to have this long story divided for you into
shorter and, if I may say, handier portions. Now, if
these divisions are to be of any real service, they must
not be merely arbitrary and artificial. They should
each of them represent a different act in that solemn
drama of divine Providence which is being enacted on
the world's stage. And here it is that I find fault with
that which has hitherto been a very favourite device
with Church historians. They have distributed, that
is, the story which they had to relate into centuries ;
and, this done, have told all which belonged, or which
seemed to belong, to one century before entering on
the events of another. The Magdeburg Centuriators,
the founders of modern Church history, proclaim by
their very name that this is the scheme which they
have adopted. To each of the thirteen centuries of
which they treat they have attributed a volume of its
own, and, down to Mosheim, such has been the popu-
lar arrangement. But this distribution by centuries,
besides often cutting up the history, into portions in-
conveniently small, lies under the fault which just now
I noted, namely, that it is purely arbitrary; and, if it
has some advantages, has inconveniences, which in my
judgment very much outweigh these. The great
movements of the Church adapt themselves to it very
ill; often do not adapt themselves at all, altogether
traverse and ignore it. These movements will not
begin exactly at the beginning of a century, nor end
exactly at its close, so to fall in with some artificial

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ON THE STUDY

scheme of ours ; and only when stretched on a bed
/of Procrustes, or on the same bed abridged and
cut short, will they even seem to adapt themselves
to it

For myself I am persuaded that I shall do wisely in
subordinating the chronological order and succession of
events to the higher interests of my story. With this
conviction I shall endeavour, so far as this may be, to
have one central fact or idea in each of my Lectures,
to group my materials round this, recapitulating what
may be behind, anticipating what lies before, refusing
altogether, so often as a higher interest seems to de-
mand this, to play the part of annalist or centuriator,
and seeking to marshal my materials according to
quite other laws than those of time. Of course as
events happen in time, and as the time when they
happen often gives them their chief significance, time
cannot be altogether ignored. I shall not, however,
count myself bound to string the events which I care
to record on the thread which it offers, but shall often
prefer to arrange and combine them according to
inner affinities of their own.

But this much, being on this subject said, there are
still errors on the one side and on the other which in
the selection and distribution of our materials it behoves
us to avoid. That kingdom of heaven which Christ
founded in the world is not exclusively the Leaven
working inwardly in the hearts of men. It is as litde
exclusively the Mustard seed, visibly growing up in the
sight of all, and spreading forth its branches until it
has covered with die shadow of them the whole earth.
It is both of these ; and our Lord, when He desired to

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OF CHURCH HISTORY.

set forth the future development of the Church which
should unfold itself from Him as from its living seed,
spake bbth these parables, one close upon the other
(Matt. xiii. 31-33), that they might mutually complete
one another, and that we might learn to give due pro-
minence to both' sides of the truth.

This is not always done. There are some Church
historians, and those men of eminent piety — indeed no
other would be likely to fall into this error — who have
an eye only for the inward operations of grace in the
hearts of individual believers. They trace with inex-
haustible interest the working of the leaven, the trans-
forming power of the truth, as it fashions into newness
of life those who have hidden that truth in their hearts.
Neander is the noblest representative of the historians
with whom, despite of all their merits, we must find
this fault. Not too spiritual, but too exclusively spiri-
tual, what he gives us is often a succession of most in-
teresting biographies, a history of the working of the
leaven in the souls of men. But for that of the mus-
tard seed, we may often search his great work in vain.
As we read, we would fain hear more, we want him to
care more and to tell us more, of the Kingdom, as it
visibly shapes itself in the world, as it confronts the
kingdoms of the world ; and to trace for us with a
more lively interest, and in bolder and firmer outiine,
the whole course of its outer fortunes no less than that
of its inner life.

With other historians on the contrary this, which I
have called the history of the mustard seed, is all in all.
They bring before us the long array of Councils and of
Popes ; they detail at length the events adverse and
prosperous which befell the Church, the outer condi-

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8 ON THE STUDY

tions of its conflict with the powers of this world. They
invite us to mark the visible growth of the tree, the
spreading of its branches ; how the birds of the air,
the great ones of the earth, came and sought shelter
in its branches, how this or that tribe or nation accepted
baptism and was aggregated to the Church. But with
all this the inward transforming power of the word of
life, its secret energy, as it makes its presence felt in
the hearts and thoughts and lives of men, of this tliey
tell us little or nothing, for this they have no eye. If
the others were at fault in making Church history
merely a history of personal piety, these are still more
in fault, not caring to tell us aught of that which after
all is the distinctive mark of the children of the king-
dom. In taking these two parables and giving to both
of them their full rights, we shall find our best protec- '
tion against onesidedness in this direction or in the
other.

There is another point which you have a right to ex-
pect that we shall not permit you to miss, the relations,
namely, of this history to contemporary profane his-
tory, and at the same time its difference and distinct-
ness from that history. Two dangers are before us
here ; the one, to lose sight of its distinctness, that is,
its- supernatural character, to merge it in the world-
history ; the other, to lose sight of the fact that the
Church exists for the world, quite as really as the
world exists for the Church, so that there can happen
no worse thing for it than to forget or to deny this. I
know that there are some for whom the Church is at
best nothing better than the organization of the moral
life of a human community for the promotion of moral
ends, and who therefore are quite consistent when they

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OF CHURCH HISTORY,

affirm that the lines which divide sacred history and
profane exist nowhere except in our imaginations. All
history, they urge, is sacred ; and so in a manner it is,
being the history of man ; and certainly if a heathen
moralist could say, Homo, sacra, res, much more, and
with better right, should we. But these, emptying that
history of a divine presence and a divine purpose, are
indeed working toward quite another result, toward
the making of all history profane. But that history,
what is it for us ? It is the record of the carrying out
in time of a divine purpose for the knitting anew into
one fellowship, under the headship of the Son of God,
of all those who, receiving Him, do themselves become
also sons of God. What other purposes beyond these
the Church may exist to fulfil are only obscurely hinted
in the Scriptures; and such, while we would not ex-
clude, we as little dare to urge.

You have a right then to demand of us that we shall
tell this story as a divine and a heavenly, not as an
earthly and a mundane ; that we shall justify the intro-
duction of this man or of that event into our story by
tracing their relation to the objects and ends which I
have just mentioned ; that we shall mark, and call upon
you to mark, the great stream of tendency, which ill
the midst of confusions, eddies and perplexing back-
waters is evermore setting heavenward. This is a di- \
vine history ; what therefore we are to look for first
and chiefly are the vestiges of God, the print of his .
footsteps, in it But it is the history of the Church not /
as an institution which will know nothing of the world, I
which in fact has been separated off from the world to S
the end that the one might 'be saved, and the other (
perish ; but as one rather whose separation from the /

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IQ ON THE STUDY

world .is as much for the world's sake as for the
Church's own, that so there may be for the world a
City of Refuge, an abiding witness in the midst of it
for a higher life than its own ; which yet, higher as it
is, may be the portion, and on the simplest conditions,
of all. The history of the Church is the history of the
life of Christ in his members, not indeed without infi-
nite faults, infirmities, shortcomings, sins, cleaving to
those in whom that life is working ; but, despite of all
these, a prolongation of the life which He began upon'
earth, the history of a divine Society by Him founded,
and which, strange to say, like an inverted tree, has
its roots above and not below, in heaven and not on
earth. All that has been the true expression of this
divine life, all that has helped, and all too that has hin-
dered, the unfolding of it, all the precious flowers and
fruits by which it has made its presence known, it is
of these which any true Church history should tell us.
Here then we have something of a clue to guide us
through that which else might prove an inextricable
labyrinth. Let us have grasped the events, let us^
have recognized the persons, that have effectually
wrought to the unfolding of this higher life, and then
whatever else we may have missed, the leading threads,
the true stamina of the history, are in our hands. Let
us on the contrary have missed these, let us not have
attempted, or attempting let us have failed, to disen-
gage these from the multitude of facts and people with
which they are mingled, and among which they are in
danger of being lost, and however well we may be up
in names and dates, in martyrdoms and persecutions
and heresies, in Fathers, in Councils, in Popes, in
events of this century and events of the other, still the

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OF CHURCH HISTORY. 1 1

real meaning and purpose of Church history will have
escaped us.

I would not willingly bring this my introductory Lec-
ture to a close without naming to you one or two faults,
not so much intellectual as moral, into which, as it
seems to me, some who have undertaken to tell this
wondrous story have fallen, and have led others to fall ;
and in which, if we did not watch against them, we
/night also be very easily entangled ourselves ; faults
from which I would fain keep myself clear, and help to
keep you clear. Beware then, I would say to you,
above all of those who in their outlook over the Lord's
field have an eye only for the tares, and none for the
wheat ; who point out to us the mountains of chaff on
the Lord's floor, but who neither themselves spe, nor
help to make others see, the golden grains which are
abundantly hidden among this ; who seem never so
well pleased as when, at the expense of the Church,
they can gratify a proud and self-satisfied world. Such
there are, though to be found more often in other lands
than in our own. To have been a standard-bearer of
the truth is no title of honour in their eyes, but rather
the contrary. If they have any heroes, these are to be
found among such as the Church has been compelled
to put from her and to disown, not among those whom
she has delighted to honour. But indeed they have
seldom any heroes at all. At their touch all which was
high becomes low, all which was heroic dwarfs and
dwindles into litdeness and meanness. The men who
spent themselves in contending to the death for truths
which should be dearer to us than light or life were
enthusiasts whose earnestness may just redeem them
from our contempt

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12 ON THE STUDY

But there is much very short of this, against which
it is well you should be upon your guard. That Church
of the living God, some stages of whose growth we
would fain trace for your instruction — ^you are not with-
out it, but within. It is your shelter, appointed of God
to be this. Nothing of its past history should be a mat-
ter of a mere curiosity or entertainment to you. You
are heirs of whatever it has gained, you are losers by
. whatever it has lost or let go. But the temptation is
strong to contemplate all this as from some " coign of
vantage " external to it, admiring this and criticising
that; adjudging praise to this man and blame to that;
resolving that this one went too far, and that not far
enough ; that TertuUian was too fierc?, and Jerome too
touchy; that Luther might sometimes have kept a bet-
ter tongue in his head, and so on. Dwell not, except
where this is necessary that so you may not miss the
lessons which God would teach us, on the faults and
mistakes of those who have been called to do his work
in his Church, and have done it There is something
better for us to dwell on in this work of theirs ; for He
who is wonderful everywhere, is nowhere so wonder-
ful as in the congregation of his saints, that is, of those
who with all their mistakes, their sins, their shortcom-
ings were the elect of humanity, the bravest, the purest,
the noblest whom the world has seen.

Accept then, I would say in conclusion, with all reve-
rence the fact that the Church militant, if in all ages a
success, is also in all ages a failure. The success may
be more evident in one age and in one land, the fail-
ure may be more marked in another ; but tokens of
this and of that will never be wanting. Some may
dwell almost exclusively on one of these aspects ; we

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OF CHURCH HISTORY. 1 3

shall do well not to hide our eyes from either. • For
us who believe the Church to be a divine foundation
in the world, it must be a success, even as it shows it-
self to be such by many infallible proofs. For us who
know that the treasure of God's grace is contained in
earthen vessels, it must be a failure no less, an imper-
fect embodiment of a divine idea. Let us boldly face
this side of the truth no less than the other.

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LECTURE II.

THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

I VENTURED in Hiy former Lecture to find fault with
the distribution of Church history into centuries, as a
. distribution purely arbitrary and artificial, and one to
which the actual events and movements with which
that history has jto do refuse to conform. But suppose
we were to say. This history presents itself to us under
three leading aspects, one succeeding the other ; its
several periods having each its own characteristic
features, and to all appearance a purpose and task of
its own; I will therefore mentally distribute it into
three portions, corresponding to these several periods,
and call them each by a name of its own. Ancient,
Medieval, and Modem. Here, supposing that as-
sumption to be a correct one, would be a scheme of
distribution natural and not forced, one answering to
facts in the world of realities, one therefore which
would afford genuine assistance to the learner, and
help to bring real clearness into his studies.

But this much being admitted, it would still be
necessary to define precisely the limits of these several
periods: at what date Ancient Church history should
be assumed to have closed and Medieval to have
begun; and again, when Medieval came to an end
and Modem commenced. That these are questions
14

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THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

not perfectly easy to answer is evident from the very
different limits and landmarks of each period on which
different writers have fixed. To take, then, Ancient
Church history first : — there can indeed be no question
about the time of its beginning. The day of Pentecost '
would on all sides be acknowledged as the birthday,
the dies natalis, of the Church. But about the date of
the termination of Ancient Church history there would
not be at all the same consent Some would assign
to it a duration of eight hundred years, would make it
reach to the revival of the Empire under Charles the
Great (800). I must needs think that this is a dura-
tion as much too long as that of Hallam is too short,
who counts the Middle Ages to have commenced with
the invasion of Gaul by Clovis (486). My conviction
is that we should articulate the history more justly if
we affirmed that, as Ancient history it closed, and as
Medieval began, with the Pontificate of Gregory the
Great (590). In him, the last of the Latin Fathers,
the first, in our modern sense of the word, of the
Popes, we bid adieu to the old Greek and Roman cul-
ture and literature and habits of thought as the pre-
dominant and ruling forces of the world. The ancient
classical wofld still lives on in bequests innumerable,
visible and invisible, not a few among these of price-
less worth, which it has made to all after times. But
another order of things is shaping itself; and Gregory
the Great, standing at the meeting-place of the old
and the new, does more than any other to set the
Church forward upon the new lines on which hence-
forth it must travel, to constitute a Latin Christianity,
with distinctive features of its own, such as broadly
separate it from Greek.

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r6 THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

Then, too, there are several grand events in the
fifteenth century which suggest themselves as world-
epochs ; fitted as such to mark the conclusion of the
Middle Ages, the commencement of another age.
There is the Invention of Printing (1440). There is
the Fall of Constantinople, and with it of the Eastern
Empire (1453). Closely connected with both of these,
but still capable of being distinguished from them, even
as it commenced before them, there is the Revival of
Learning, to which, however, it is hard to affix an
exact date. There is, lasdy, "the Discovery of the
New World (1492), with the widening of men's
thoughts to meet this outward fact. They are all
events of an immense importance ; and each one of
them well fitted to toll the knell of a departing age,
and to announce the birth of a new. They might
every one of them plead its own fitness to be the
merestone to mark where one era terminated and
another began. But they have all of them primarily
more or less of a mundane significance; and seeing
that we are treating of a history which is not of this
world, however it may be in it, I should be disposed to
look a little further, to the Reformation (i5i7),and to
conclude the period of the Medieval Church history
with it. No doubt, in some respects, it is too late a
day. We are already well advanced in the modem
world ; but grave inconveniences attend every other
date, graver than those which attend this.

Modern Church history remains, that which is
actually unfolding itself before our eyes, and in which
we ourselves play a part What the limits in time of
this niiay be, what will come after it, if indeed it
shall not prove a winding up of the present dis-

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THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

pensation, these "times and seasons" it is not for us
to know.

But these three periods, each of them including
many hundred years, are still too big to be conve-
niendy handled. The larger blocks of time must
again be broken up into smaller sizes, the divisions
must be in their turn themselves subdivided. All who
have undertaken to tell the Church's story have felt
this, and that resting-places at shorter intervals must
be found. Thus Ancient Church history might again
be profitably distributed into three lesser portions.
The first of these would be properly characterized as
the Apostolic, reaching down as it does to the death
of the last of the Apostles, St. John (98), and embrac-
ing therefore something less than one hundred years.
This period has a distinctive character of its own, being
in the Apostles and Apostolic men authoritative and
constitutive for the after Church. Upon this follows
the period of the Church's conflict with Pagan Rome,
the period of the Ecclesia pressa, as it is sometimes
called, reaching down to Constantine's Edict of Tolera-
tion (311). Then, completing the period of Ancient
Church history, follow some two centuries or more,
during a good part of which the Church rides on the
high places of the earth, having exchanged the trials
of adversity for the temptations, at least as dangerous,
of prosperity.

In the same way Medieval Church history will fitly
fall into three subdivisions. The first, extending from
the Pontificate of Gregory the Great to that of
Gregory VII. (1050), will embrace the Middle Ages
in their formation, as a new order of things is gra-

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1 8 - THE MIDDLE A GES BE GINNING.

dually shaping itself out of the chaos and confusion in
which those Ages began, the breaking up of an old
world, and litde by litrie the construction of a new.
The second period will reach from the Pontificate of
Gregory VII. to that of Boniface VIIL or the Middle
Ages in their glory, and at their height. To this, their
creative period, belong all those magnificent births
which they have bequeathed, some to the admiration,
and all to the wonder, of the after world — the Cru-
sades, the rise of Gothic Architecture, the Schoolmen,
the Mystics, the Mendicant Orders, the Universities.
To this belongs the struggle, so grand and so terrible,
between the world-king and the world-priest, the Em-
peror and the Pope, with the complete triumph for the
time of the latter ; and thus to this also belongs the
Papacy in the most towering heights to which it ever
ascended.

Then follows the period from Boniface VIIL to the
Reformation, or the Middle Ages in their decline and
decay. Their productive vigour is exhausted; they
are unable to bring forth any new births, or to main-
tain at their height such as they have received from
the times which went before. These Ages, once so
confident in themselves, but now defeated in so many
of their dearest hopes, are losing heart; they have
ceased to believe in themselves any more, and so give
clearest intimation that whatever good purposes they
and the institutions which were proper and peculiar to
them were capable of serving, these they had served
already; that the one crowning favour which some of
the most characteristic among them could now confer
on the Church and the world would be to pass away,
if so a new and a better might succeed in their room.

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THE MIDDLE A GES BE GINNING. 1 9

The period of Modern Church history, being as yet
only partially unrolled, being one, moreover, which we
do not contemplate from any external point of view,
but in which we ourselves are involved, is less capable
of being further subdivided than either which went
before. At the same time the Peace of Westphalia
(1648) offers a. convenient resting-place for the mind.
With that the political, though not the religious, con-
flict between the Reformed and the Roman Catholic
communities in Western Christendom came virtually
to an end. That remarkable reaction, which had so
signally counter-checked the early triumphs of the 1
Reformation, winning back to the Roman Obedience \
much which at one moment appeared lost to it for
evef, in its turn had run its course ; and, having dis-
covered what it could effect, and what it could not, was
then compelled to own that the attempt to crush the
Reformation by mere force, as something which had no
right to exist, must for ever be renounced.

Hitherto we have contemplated the Church as exist-
ing under conditions of time. But it subsists also under
conditions of space ; and at different epochs has, so to
speak, shifted its ground, at all events shifted its centre,
and occupied different portions of the area of the
civilized world We may profitably lay out a geo-
graphical as well as a chronological ground-plan for
our study here. And first, is there any order which
we can trace in the midst of all their confusion in these
changes of its local dwelling-place ? And if so, can we
recognize the law which has in different ages deter-
mined the bounds of its habitation ? I think there is,
and that we can ; and we shall be the more confident

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20 THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

that this is so, when we find in the main the great
changes of place coincident with those other changes
in time of which we have just been speaking.

Thus I do not need to remind you at how early a
day the Church chipped its Jewish shell, refused any
more to be bound in Jewish swaddling clothes ; how
the Word of life, rejected by them who had the prior
right to its blessings, was offered to the heathen, and
eagerly embraced by them,-;-the Aposdes, St. Paul in
chief, planting Churches in all the principal cities of
the Greek and Roman world. Thus during the first
period, the Roman Empire, that zone of fertile land
which surrounds the great inland sea, to which we
now restrict the name of " the Mediterranean," was the
chief, almost the exclusive, sphere of the Church's ac-
tivity. Here and there might be some missionary effort
beyond, or even an oudying Church, as in Persia, or
beyond the Danube, but these were accidental and
exceptional. I have called it the Graeco- Roman world,
for the Asiatic cities, such as Antioch and Ephesus,
which play so important a part at this time, had been
thoroughly hellenized — this was one of the fruits of
Alexander's conquests — ^indeed the Greek spirit was
immeasurably stronger and more living in them than in
Greece itself. Such is the appointed sphere in which
the Church lives and moves for the first five or six
hundred years of its existence. At first overlooked,
then repelled as an intruder, slandered^ fought against,
persecuted, trampled under foot, it yet makes good
its position, overcomes by patience, by meekness, by
the word of the testimony, by the blood of the Cross ;
until at length it appropriates the classical language
and culture, fills them, so far as they are capable of

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THE MIDDLE A GES BE GINNING. 2 1

being filled, with the spirit of a new life ; and within
the limits of the Roman Empire there rises up, first a
Greek and then a Latin Church literature of inestima-
ble price for all after times.

But the Roman Empire is doomed. Christianity
can delay its perishing, but cannot avert it. God has
something better in store for his Church. It shall
display its power, not in arresting for a while the de-
cay of an old and dying civilization, not yet upon
nations the best period of whose life had been long
overlived before it was planted in their midst; but
upon those whose best is all in the future. The rude
and unsophisticated children of the North break down
the barriers which Roman arts and arms had so long,
and for the last century or two so painfully, main-
tained against them. They settled in all the fairest
provinces of the Western Empire. Ere long, how-
ever, they own the mighty power of the Gospel of
Christ ; of his Church which has stood erect when all
other institutions have gone to the ground before them.
These races, barbarous indeed, but full of native ener-
gy, with many noble possibilities which only waited
the word of the Cross to call them out, accept the
yoke of Christ; and after a litde while the message
of the Gospel is carried back by them among the
tribes of their kindred which had remained in their
primitive seats. The Church is travelling westward
and northward, making conquests there which shall
serve as a compensation for the immense losses which
it is enduring in another quarter, where the great
Arabian heresiarch and the Caliphs, his successors,
are doing their work only too well, so that in lands
which were once the very cradle of Christianity, it

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22 THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

now barely exists through the sufferance and contempt
of its foes. The Church is not so much Greek and
Latin, with these two hemispheres balancing and com-
pleting one another, as Latin and Germanic. I use
tliis word and not German, to indicate that I include
therein all families of the Teutonic stock. What is
Greek indeed still subsists, but has fallen so far behind
that it can hardly be counted any more in the running.

In Modern Church history there is a still further
shifting of the centre of the Church's life. Rome is not
this centre any more, neither do the nations occupying
the soil of the Latin Empire stand in the forefront of
things. Repelling and repudiating, as all these did, the
Reformation, in which was the Church's hope for the
future, they too have fallen into the rear. As the Greek
Church fell behind in the second period, so the Latin, as
represented by Rome and the Churches in communion
with her, is falling behind in the third. Not we our-
selves, but those who come after, must declare of us
whether we, into whose hands the lamp of faith has now
passed, shall have run aright the race set before us;
whether we shall have accomplished the glorious des-
tiny which has been placed within our reach, but which
only too easily we may miss. It is yet to be seen wlie-
ther England, this Esther which has been so strangely
exalted to one of the chief 'thrones in the world, will
listen to the voice which is saying to her, "Who know-
eth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a
time as this?*' or whether this kingdom shall be taken
away from her, and given to some other who shall know
how to use its opportunities better.

It is the second of the three periods thus marked

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THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

out with which we, in this present course of Lectures,
have to do. We start with the Pontificate of Gregory
the Great. Let us seek to take a brief oversight of the
aspect which Western Christendom presented, when
he was called to the helm of the sorely tossed ship of
the Church, and trace with this some chief features of
his own work. And first let me observe that, whether
for good or for evil, he must be accepted as the true
founder of the Medieval Papacy. It is the source of
infinite confusion, and throws back the historic exist-
ence of the Papacy to a period at which, in its later
developments, it did not exist at all, when we speak of
a Pope before his time. None, of course, would deny
that the Bishop of Rome bore that tide before; but he
only bore it, as all other Bishops did. It was not till
about the sixth century that the title began to be re-
stricted to one Bishop of the West; this restrictibn be-
ing, no doubt, an indication that the difference between
him and other Bishops was making itself so felt as to
demand its utterance and expression in words. Much,
no doubt, in the conditions of the world around wrought
together for the marking out of the difference between
him and all those, others whose office was not in itself
inferior to his, and for giving a new emphasis to this
difference ; yet in the main it was the virtues of Gre-
gory, these, it is true, seconded by his rare gifts of go-
vernment, which gave to the office that he held so far
higher a significance, and so much greater a weight
than ever it had possessed before.

Those virtues were indeed eminent, and endured the
proof, being tried to the uttermost in a very evil time.
For in truth the oudook which the Church in his day
presented was so dark and gloomy that it could

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THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

scarcely have been darker or gloomier, to whatever
side he turned. After long wars which had utterly
waited Italy, and left -Rome itself'tittle better than a
desert, famine and pestilence consuming what the
sword had spared; after troubles and confusions which
had loosened or quite dissolved the bands of ecclesias-
tical discipline, the Byzantine Emperors, thanks to the
genius of Belisarius and Narses, had recovered their
Italian dominions (553), though soon to lose for ever
the main part of them again. This meant that the Bi-
shop of Rome was once more their subject ; and if, out
of prudential motives, treated sometimes with a certain
deference, yet not secure from the worst outrages and
indignities, if he failed to jump with all the var>'ing
doctrinal humours of the Byzantine Court. Nor was
this a mere chimerical danger. One of Gregory's suc-
cessors, Martin I., refusing to conform to the shifting
changes of the Imperial theology, was sent in chains
to the East, put there on his trial ; and being con-
demned, tasted the worst which the malice of foes
could inflict (655).

But there were dangers nearer and more urgent.
It was but a few years before Gregory's elevation that
the Lombards, pressed upon by other tribes in their
previous seats to the North-East, had occupied those
fertile plains of Upper Italy to which they have be-
queathed a name which has long survived their com-
paratively short-lived dominion there (568-744). The
Lombards were still Arians ; but though their Arian-
ism sat loosely upon them, it was excuse enough for
every sort of fanatic outrage on the Catholic faith and
the holders of it ; while in other ways they were less
accessible to the influences of Roman culture than any

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THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING. ' 25

Other of tlie Teutonic tribes. Rome and the Roman
Bishop were in constant danger from them. Tardy
and insufficient was any help which could be looked
for from the Imperial Exarch at Ravenna. The Em-
peror and the Emperor's representative could oppress,
but could not protect ; while the star of deliverance
which, rising in the land of the Franks, should bring
freedom to the Church at once from the Greek and
the Lombard, was not yet visible above the horizon.

Nor was the outlook beyond much more encou-
raging. In the conversion of the Arian Goths of Spain
and their king to the Catholic faith was almost the one
glimpse of light and comfort which Gregory, as he
looked around him, could anywhere have found.
Frightful calamities following hard upon one another
had reduced the once glorious North African Church
to a faint shadow of what once it had been, that shadow
itself in less than a century wholly to disappear (670).
The line of the Danube and the Rhine, lost to the
Church during the confusions of the preceding centu-
ries, was only being slowly regained; while the serried
strength of Teutonic heathenism beyond remained un-
assailed as yet, and, until its strength had been effec-
tually broken by the stronger hand of Charles the
Great, was an abiding menace to civilized and Chris-
tian Europe. Of England, for the most part heathen
still, I shall speak in another Lecture.

In the East the prospects of the Church were not
less cheerless. The long ignoble agony of Byzantine
Christianity had fairly begun. The Council of Chal-
cedon (451), while it renewed the Church's protest
against Nestorianism, so chilly and rationalistic, had
condemned no less the more spiritual errors of Euty-

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26 THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

ches and the Monophysites ; but its wise moderation
had profited nothing. The decisions which should
have been the end, proved unhappily rather a new be-
ginning of strife, or at any rate a new departure for it
In some parts of the Empire, as notably in Egypt, the
Monophysites far outnumbered the CathoKcs, these
and those furiously raging against one another ; while
the Emperors, seeking to compose the quarrel, but
meddling as arbiters in a conflict which was not to be
settled by Imperial decrees, only inflamed the strife
which they thought to allay ; and thus all was ripening
for that tremendous catastrophe, that judgment-doom
on the Eastern Church, which, unguessed as yet by
any iportal man, was even then at the door. The
Arabian camel-driver who should change the whole
face of the East was some twenty years old when Gre-
gory was called to the Pontificate (590); he had
reached his thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year when Gre-
gory died (604), though it was not till some seven
years later that he began openly to proclaim his
mission.

And yet we may say boldly that had the gift of
prophecy been added to the many gifts which Greg-
ory possessed, had he known all which was even then
so near, it would not have shaken his confidence that
the kingdom of God is the one kingdom in the world
which cannot be moved ; even as it was in this faith
that he did so much to bear up the pillars of a totter-
ing Church and world. Whether he was fully aware
that old things were passing away, and about to make
room for new, may very well be a question, as it is
always a question whether the primary actors in such
mighty transformations are themselves fully conscious

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THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

of them ; but certainly both in what he wrote and in
what he did, there are tokens of ia sense upon his part
of an old world overlived, of a new world beginning.
Thus it may seem but a small matter, yet in fact is
very significant, that he should announce in the Pre-
face to his main theological work that he did not
intend to embarrass himself or his readers by any
painful adherence to the laws of the Latin language.
Much utters itself here. Plainly he has turned his back,
so far as this was possible, on the old Greek and Roman
'world. Him, the foremost man of his age, the classi-
cal literature does not interest in the least. He has
only rebukes for a Bishop whom it does interest.
Then, too, the credulity which in the Middle Ages so
often took the place of faith, which failed to draw any
line of distinction between history and legend, is only
too strong in him, while in his own writings may be
detected germs of errors which appear full-blown at a
later age. All this must be freely admitted, while yet,
when all is said, he must be owned to complete, and
worthily, to complete, the grand quaternion of the
recognized Doctors of the Latin Church, and to close
the catalogue of these. *

And this is not all. So many changes in the service-
book of the Church have found place during the twelve
hundred years which have since run their course, that
it is easier to acknowledge the greatness of our debt
to Pope Gregory as first and happiest of liturgic innova-
tors and reformers, organizer of the Church's worship
as it never had been organized before, than to define
exacdy wherein that debt consists. Only I will men--
tion that to him we owe that plain song or chant,
which still bears his name ; and which, if it wanted the

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28 THE MIDDLE AGES BEGINNING.

freshness, the movement, the popularity of the Ambro-
sian melodies which it displaced, very far surpassed
them in dignity and solemnity ; while it broke defini-
tively away from all of Greek and Pagan which still
lingered about and haunted those other.

But if the whole Latin Church owes him so much,
there is a peculiar and special benefit for which Eng-
lish men and women are his debtors, and which we
should prove most unthankful if we suffered to fall out
of sight, this namely, — that, regarding as part of his
high commission to take oversight of the heathen world,
to reduce under spiritual culture the outfield of the
nations, he saw and seized the opportunity for reannex-
ing England to Western Christendom, from which it
had now for nearly two centuries been violendy torn
away. The Conversion of England, by him auspica-
ted and begun, will furnish the subject of my next
Lecture.

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LECTURE III.

THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

The conquest of Britain by the Saxons and Angles,
and their own setdement in the land which they had
conquered, differed in some most important features
from corresponding events in other countries which
had, like Britain, once formed part of the Roman Em-
pire. In other lands it was a forcible taking possess-
ion of the soil by the intrusive race, who thrust out
the old occupants from such parts of it as pleased
them best ; and this intrusion was no doubt carried
through with no litde violence and of suffering to the
conquered people. At the same time, as Guizot shows
long ago, it is easy to exaggerate the amount of this
suffering ; and one thing is beyond doubt, namely,
that there was no extermination ; that a modus vivendi
was discovered, and the conquering and the conquered
races contrived to subsist side by side ; nay, more
than this, that the conquering accepted before very
long the language, the civilization, and in the end the
religion of the conquered. It had been quite other-
wise here. There had been no attempt at a transac-
tion between the Saxon and .the Briton. The invaders
made a tjiorough clearance of the land as they ad-
vanced, winning their way now swiftly, now slowly,
and at times coming to a stand. What remained of

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30 THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

the British population, all which had not perished in
an unavailing resistance, was pushed westward and
northward ; to West Wales, that is to Cornwall, to
North Wales, or Wales as we should call it now, and
to other the northern parts of the Island. Britain, or
England as we must name it henceforth, was pagan-
ized anew. A wedge of heathenism, thrust in between
Christian Ireland and the Christian continent of West-
ern Europe, it separated these, and was itself com-
pletely withdrawn from any share in their higher life.

It is to Gregory the Great we owe the foundation
of the mission by which England was restored to its
place in the commonwealth of Christian nations. I
pass by, though not as questioning its truth, the tender
and graceful story of the Angles and the Angels, of
Deira and De Ira, of Ella and Hallelujah, It is suffi-
cient for me to remind you how this illustrious Bishop
of the Western Church saw that the time had arrived
for seeking to draw once more within the pale of
Christendom this Island, which had been lost to it so
long ; recognized in the marriage of Ethelbert, King
of Kent — King, that is, of the most civilized part of
the land, and with an acknowledged superiority over
the whole — to Bertha, a Prankish and thus a Christian
Princess, an opening afforded which should not be ne-
glected. It was not a sudden thought The English
mission, with its toils and dangers, he had once hoped
to appropriate to himself. But, raised to his present
dignity, he must be content to select another, the Ro-
man Abbot Augustine, to whom he added some forty
companions more, who should make good that lack of
service upon his own part which now was unavoidable.
Need I tell you how the Roman Pontiff cheered, en-

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND. 31

couraged, and rebuked his missionaries, when these,
having gotten as far as Gaul, would fain have turned
back, terrified by the reports which they heard of the
people to whom they were sent, " a people of a fierce
countenance, whose language they could not under-
stand?" Familiar also to us all is the story of the
favourable reception which they found, such as must
have made them abundantly ashamed of their unfaith-
ful fears ; King Ethelbert himself before very long
accepting the yoke of Christ (597), and drawing after
him, as was the ever-recurring feature of these conver-
sions, his chiefs, who in their turn drew after them the
mass of the people.

Augustine, satisfied that a veritable work had begun,
journeys as far as France ; is there consecrated by
the Pope's Vicar, Vergilius, Metropolitan of Aries.
Returning to England, he uses his liberty in selecting
Canterbury as the future ecclesiastical centre of the
land, and not London, which was heathen still ; but
which Gregory, with his imperfect knowledge of the
actual political conditions of England and the division
of its kingdoms, had designed and named. And now
some additional helpers joined him from Rome, with
assistance in other shapes from the Pope, who watched
with a tender solicitude over the Church which he
had planted. Nor did he omit to send to Augustine
the pall, at once a token of the archiepiscopal dignity
which now was his, and of his holding this as the gift
of the Pope. But more valuable. than all the rest
were the wise monitions with which the large-hearted
Pontiff, who must have known his man, accompanied
his gifts, urging as he did upon him that he shpuld
not push too far his demands of an exact conformity

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32 THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

to Roman rules and usages in things indifferent on
the part of his new converts. Whatever anywhere
he found of good and edifying, let him adopt and make
his own. It was not long before Augustine had ample
room and opportunity for the exercise of that wisdom
and moderation by Gregory enjoined on him here; but
it must be owned that the opportunity was missed, and
the admonition laid very imperfectly to heart. A good
man, he was also a narrow and unconciliatory. The
grand breadth and tolerance, at least in things second-
ary, of Gregory would in vain be looked for in him.
On a review of his whole career, we have no choice
but to say that, as will sometimes happen, the work
was grander than the man who wrought the work, that
he did not so much achieve greatness, as have great-
ness thrust upon him. And this showed itself so ere
long.

Augustine, as I have said already, found England in
the main a heathen land ; and yet not so but that Bri-
tish Christians and a British Church existed still. The
Teutonic invaders had destroyed all which they could
destroy in the deserted Roman province, but had not
been able to make a clean sweep of Christianity from
the Island. Augustine felt it most desirable to come
to some understanding with the heads of this Church,
that they, acknowledging his authority, and with this,
of course, that of his sender, might be underworkers
with him for the evangelizing of the English people; a
work not to be accomplished by the little band which
he had brought with him. and the scanty reinforcement
which had subsequently joined him. But the task of
associating British and Roman Missionaries in a com-
mon work was one difficult and delicate, and, with all

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND. 33

which we owe to Augustine, it must be freely allowed
that he was not the man to effect it. On the other
hand, it can as litde be affirmed of the British Chris-
tians that they yearned to take that glorious revenge
on their Anglo-Saxon enemies which was placed with-
in their reach. These or the fathers of these had de-
spoiled them of earth ; they were litde disposed in re-
turn to help their spoilers to heaven. The attempt,
however,. to arrange terms of co-operation was made.
Augustine got together a Synod at which a certain
number of the British Bishops were induced to attend;
but these, offended at his assumption, refused to accept
the Roman rule for the keeping of Easter, or other-
wise to submit to the supremacy of the Bishop of
Rome, of which they declared that they had not heard
before, and which, hearing of now, they repudiated al-
together. It was not very wonderful that this attempt
at reconciliation, or, to describe it more accurately, this
summons to submission, did not close the rent and
rift between the Churches, but ratiier left it wider than
before.

Let me note here that it is altogether a mistake,
though a very common one, to assume that the differ-
ence about Easter, which did so much to keep them
asunder, was a revival of the old dispute between the
Churches of Asia Minor (Ephesus above all) and the
rest of Christendom — the same which had been settied
at the Council of Nicae ; and it is mistake reared upon
mistake to adduce this as a proof that Britain had re-
ceived her Christianity from the East ; which it is just
possible may have been the case, but for which there
is no evidence here. In the Churches of Asia Minor,
which professed to follow the tradition of St John, the

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

method of calculation, fundamentally distinct from that
of the West, was such that the Easter festival might
fall upon any day in the week. Nothing of the kind
could possibly happen in the British. Its Easter basis
of calculation, if I may so call it, was identical with that
of Rome. It was only that, in the application of a rule
which was common to both, the other Churches of the
West and Rome at their head, not being cut off from
the superior astronomical knowledge of Alexandria,
had learned from time to time to make allowance for
certain disturbing facts, and had adjusted their calen-
dar to these. The British Church meanwhile, sepa-
rated for long years from the science of the Christian
world, had failed to make the corrections in her calen-
dar which were necessary, if Easter wj^s to preserve
its proper place.

The centre of interest shifts after Augustine's death,
of which the exact year is not certainly known, from
the little kingdom of Kent, in which alone his very
moderate missionary successes were obtained, to the
more important kingdom of Northumbria, where King
Edwin, he too married to a Christian princess, after
long hesitation, is won for the truth, to which he loyally
cleaves, and for which in the end he lays down his life.
For not inconsiderable as had been the triumphs thus
far of the Gospel in the land, England was not con-
verted or nearly converted yet If the truth goes
forth "conquering and to conquer," yet it has its de-
feats, its dark days, before the complete triumph ar-
rive. The com of wheat must die, or appear to die,
before it bears much fruit It seems indeed an almost
universal law of mission work, that the definitive vic-
tory is not won without a temporary reaction of more

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

or less severity. The powers of darkness, seen and
unseen, the spiritual weaknesses which constitute the
real background of every form of heathenism, these,
with all whom they can enlist in their service, gather
themselves up, as with the energy of despair, for a last
and decisive struggle with the kingdom of light. A
fierce tempest of wrath sweeps over the Church, and
the patient work of years perishes, or seems to perish,
in an hour. So fared it, though not to the full extent,
in the Roman Empire. A Constantine might seem to
have brought, but did not indeed bring, all to a happy
end ; there must still be a Julian and an apostasy be-
fore a Theodosius came. And s(J fares it in cases
innumerable. Ansgar must prove the truth of this in
Sweden. Hungary twice relapses into heathenism,
even after a St. Stephen had sat upon its throne. In
our own days we have seen something of the same
kind in New Zealand and Madagascar, It was not
otherwise in the England of old. The fierce pagan
King of Mercia, Penda by name, heads the heathen
reaction ; and when Edwin falls in batde, it might
seem as that witii him had fallen the whole imposing
but unstable edifice of Christianity in the north of the
Island (633).

But Christ is mightier than Woden. The work,
arrested for a while, goes forward again. Yet it is
not the band of Italian monks, who are too few, nor
yet missionaries from the British Church in Wales, who
have too litde heart for the task, by whom the conver-
sion of northern England shall be accomplished. Other
evangelists, and these from quite a different quarter,
appear upon the scene, and take up the uncompleted
work; and to them the chief glory of it must belong.

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36 THE CONVERSION OE ENGLAND,

To the Celtic monks, who were also the travellers,
the scholars, the missionaries of the sixth, the seventh,
and the eighth century, England, and indeed all North-
Western Europe, owes a debt of gratitude which is
hardly as yet acknowledged to the full. Bede, though
writing altogether from the Roman point of view,
bears witness to the single-mindedness and devotion
with which they addressed themselves to the mission-
ary work. Two hundred years have elapsed since St.
Patrick taught ; but he had left multitudes behind him,
his lineal spiritual descendants, in whose hearts was
burning the same sacred fire which had once burned so
brightly in his own. Not a few of these, passing over
from Ireland, had chosen the litde storm-beaten island
of lona among the Western Hebrides, with the hope that
from it as from a centre might radiate the light of
God's truth into all the darkness round; nor were
diey disappointed in their hope.

On all those points of discipline and rituil observ-
ance on which the British Church of Wales was at
issue with Rome, they were at issue no less ; but there
was nothing in their past history to estrange them
from the English as the Britons were estranged ; and
they threw themselves with a will, not one by one, but
by troops and companies, into the work which was be-
fore them ; Aidan, called the Apostle of Northumbria,
gentle, and winning souls by the gendeness of Christ,
leading the way. The points of difference and diver-
gence between these and the missionaries who had
received their commission from Rome, came into no
perplexing prominence so long as their several spheres
of labour, north and south, lay apart from each other.
But when, by the very successes which attended their

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND, 37

labours, these came to touch one another, as before
very long they did, the crisis, sooner or later inevita-
ble arrived, and the question whether Celtic or Roman
Christianity should be paramount ih the land. It was
a question which hung for a while in the balance.
Rome triumphed in the end. We may regard the Coun-
cil of Whitby (663) as the turning point. At this the
advocates of the Roman celebration of Easter and of
the British severally pleaded before Oswy, then the
most powerful monarch in the Heptarchy. He, be-
ing assured by the advocates for the Roman use that
this was according to the mind of St, Peter, and that
St. Peter had the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to ad-
mit or exclude, did not think it prudent to put himself in
opposition to one so powerful, and declared for this use.
The tide of popular favour set from this time for-
ward more and more strongly in the direction of Rome;
which litde by litde triumphed not in England only,
but in Ireland and Scodand as well, until lona, the
latest stronghold of Celtic Christianity, was itself won
(716). Many, it is true of the more ardent and indepen-
dent spirits among the Scottish missionaries refused to
accept the yoke and to bow to the obedience of Rome.
Seeing no place for them here any more, they crossed
the seas to found, or where this was already done, to
strengthen and extend, the Mission Churches in Frisia
and Northern Germany, which their brethren had al-
ready founded. A grand career was opened to them
there, and they were not wanting to it (see p. 60) ;
while yet in the end the same issues which the con-
flict had found in England, it found also abroad. The
struggle with R9me being again renewed on the Ger-
man soil found the same results. By the year 743,

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38 THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

thanks mainly to Boniface,— of whom in another Lec-
ture, — Roman Christianity was everywhere triumphant
there. The work of the Celtic missionaries was with
their God.

Owning as we must that there were precious truths
held with clearness by the Celtic Church — ^you will
hear it often spoken of as the Church of tlie Culdees —
truths which were already more or less obscure in the
Roman, we are sometimes tempted to wish that the
issue had been otherwise. And yet it would be well
to ask. Was there, in any Celtic Church which could
then have been founded, that which would have enabled
it, or the England which would have been formed and
fashioned under its influence, to endure the tremen-
dous strain of the next four hundred years ? All was
best as it was. The centuries which followed showed
only too clearly the weak points of Celtic Chris-
tianity. Devoid of that unifying power, of that won-
derful gift of order and organization which was the
strength of the Roman, passionately throwing itself
into tribal quarrels, and making them its own, it
would have consumed itself in intestine strifes. In-
stead of offering a basis of unity for the land, and
refusing to recognize, as the Roman Church refused
to recognize, the rivalries and enmities of Northum-
brian and Mercian and South Saxon, it would have
introduced new elements of discord and division ; and
that unity of England, anyhow so hard to obtain, and
so long struggled for in vain, would have become
well-nigh or altogether impossible. Neither could
England, on the remote fringe as it then was of the
civilized world, have afforded to be separated from the
arts and culture of Western Europe, which all found

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

their centre at Rome ; and which, few and fragmen-
tary as they were, were yet all which survived from
the mighty wreck of old Greek and Latin civilization
to carry the Church and the world through the dark
and evil days which were before them both. At the
same time, considerations such as these should not
abate in the least our gratitude for all which we owe
to these Celtic evangelists, who wrought so large a
share in the conversion of England, and for whom
that law of the kingdom of heaven was so signally true,
" One soweth and another reapeth/'

I cannot close this sketch of the first founding of our
English Church without honourable mention of one
who did more than any other to bring into harmonious
working order and to knit into an organic whole that
which hitherto had been litde more than a mere assem-
blage of isolated missions. Theodore of Tarsus, a
philosopher and divine, trained in the East, but having
accepted a mission from the Pope (669), is deservedly
an illustrious name in our ecclesiastical annals. To
him we probably owe the rudiments of our parochial
system. It was he wh(5 recast, according to later
needs, the episcopal divisions of the land, which had
been originally co-extensive with the kingdoms of the
Heptarchy. If much has since perished of his ar-
rangements — ^and the Danish Invasion swept much
away — not a litrie still survives to the present hour.
The victory of Roman over Celtic Christianity was
already practically decided when he camei but he
did much to reconcile the victors and the vanquished,
a Wilfred, " of great parts and greater passions," as
Fuller has it, and a Chad, clothed with that grace of
humility which Wilfred sometimes lacked ; nor shall

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

we ascribe to Theodore too high an honour if we
regard him as in some sort a second founder of the
English Church, giving to it broader and safer foun-
dations than an Augustine, or those who wrought
merely in the spirit, at once narrow and timid, of Au-
gustine, could have ever given.

Having brought this story thus far, to the events
which determined the future character of the Church
in this land, I must renounce any attempt to follow it
further; and content myself with calling your attention
to a few of the leading aspects which it presents, until
such time as, with the Norman Conquest, our English
Church may be said to have taken a new departure.
Certainly it had accomplished much in the first hun-
dred and fifty years of its existence. There are bril-
liant pages in its annals. A nation of heathens had
been converted, not by violence, not by the sword, into
a nation of Christians — most imperfectly converted, no
doubt, but all save a few slight traces of heathendom
had disappeared. There was much for which to thank
God ; and yet, with all -this, it must be freely admitted
that it did not in its later days altogether fulfil the
promise of an earlier time. None, it is true, with good
right, could call that tree a barren one which put forth
such shoots as this did, which produced scholars such
as Bede and Alcuin, a poet such as Caedmon, mission-
aries such as Willibrord and Boniface, a statesman
such as Dunstan, a king such as Alfred. But for all
this, there are grave shadows resting on the Anglo-
Saxon Church ; nor can these be adequately explain-
ed and their gravity diminished by a reference to the
terrible calamities which after a while overtook this

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

.Church, seeing that those calamities themselves can
only be regarded as the just punishment of preceding
sins.

There have been races, which under the transform-
ing influences, primary and secondary, of the Gospel
of Christ, have laid aside their inborn fierceness, but
this without laying aside or losing the strength and
energy of character of which that fierceness had been
the perverted utterance ; races which have brought
their energy with them into that new and higher sphere
in which now they moved, and found room to exercise
it there. Foremost among the races which thus kept
all they before had which was worth the keeping,
while they added much to this which only that higher
civilization by Christianity rendered possible could
give, were the Normans. These, as their name attests,
were Northmen, once, Scandinavian pirates, with all
.the tameless strength of those wild sea-robbers ; who
settling themselves down here and there, as in Neu-
stria, in Calabria, in Sicily, in Greece, adopted the arts
of peace, the creed, the language of those among whom
they setded, with whatever of rarer and finer culture
those might own ; but did this without bating one jot of
their original vigour, manhood and love of adventure ;
an aspiring race, subtle and crafty ; yet not relying on
these serpentine gifts alone, for they were also strong
to do and to dare ; the most brilliant chivalry of Eu-
rope, hewing out with the sWbrd kingdoms and princi-
palities for themselves, as was shown upon many a
famous field and day ; and chiefly on that field of
Senlac and day of St. Calixtus, field and day most
memorable of all, when the Saxon battle-axes went
down at length before the Norman spears, and the

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42 THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

fate of England for long centuries, we may be bold to
say for all time, was determined.

But of Angles and Saxons it must be owned, that if
they gained much when they bowed to the yoke of
Christ, there was also something which, though they
might have kept, they did at the same time let go.
Among the grave shadows at which I hinted just now,
I certainly will not reckon the devotion which the
English Church felt and showed to the distant mother
that bore her. And yet it must be freely owned that
this devotion, romantic, childlike, and happily ignorant
of much which would have put it to a severe test, was
not always bestowed wisely or well. Its existence
none can contest Among all the Teutonic tribes, the
English, being once converted, proved the most de-
voted children of the Church. More than thirty kings
and queens descended from the throne to end their
days in cloistral retreats. It would be difficult to num-
ber the other scions of noble houses, male and female,
who thus sought to win heaven by the abandonment
at once of the pomps and duties of earth. From no
other western land were pilgrimages of rich and poor
to the thresholds of the Aposdes so frequent or so
numerous. From no other land did there flow into
the Papal exchequer such rich contributions. Peter's
Pence, if afterwards adopted by others, was an English
invention at the first

It was the monks who 'had converted England. It
was inevitable therefore that the monastic element
should be strong throughout the whole of Anglo-Saxon
life, from the throne to the cottage should pervade it
all. This was natural and, in a land newly converted
and only little by little to be weaned from innumerable

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND. 43

heathen superstitions and idolatries, was not in itself
to be regretted. Still this might easily be overdone,
and it was not long before it was overdone. It was
not long before all or nearly all of the public lands
were alienated for ever to churches and monasteries,
till little or nothing remained with which to recompense
those whose strong arms and courageous hearts had
shielded, or should hereafter shield, the throne and
uphold the State. Under whatever obligations to mi-
litary service these lands may have been held, every
such alienation must have diminished the number of
those who should have borne arms in the country's
defence. The thane, whose place was in the forefront
of the battle, had assumed the tonsure, oftentimes his
sons with him. England was fast becoming a nation
of monks. Let a true piety, however ill-directed, have
had its share here ; but love of ease, an ignoble shrink-
ing from the task and toil of life, had also theirs in de-
veloping this cloistral religion in a manner so exces-
sive. Already Bede, when as yet the danger was re-
mote, asked with anxiety what would be the end of
these insane gifts, of this forgetfulness of arms and all
martial exercises on their parts who were the natural
defenders and guardians of their native land. It was
plain before very long what this end would be.

Keep all these things- in mind, and also the fact, not
to be denied, that there was a coarse animalism from
which the Anglo-Saxon temperament was not free, a
sluggish self-indulgence, which such unworthy with-
drawals from toil and from danger must have done
much to foster and feed, and you have in good part an
explanation here of the frightful calamities which in
the eighth and ninth ' centuries overtook Christian

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THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

England, of the faint resistance which the spoilers and
destroyers who made it their prey encountered. A
people such as I have just described needed to be
emptied from vessel to vessel, if they were not hope-
lessly to settle down upon their lees. And the need-
ful discipline was not wanting. The Dane first, and
the Norman after him, were stern but effectual re-
minders that men cannot with impunity leave unfulfilled
the duties to which God has called them, whatever else
in the way of will- worship they may substitute in their
room. These reminders were not altogether thrown
away, thanks above all other to Alfred the Great
Many precious boons we owe to him, but this the most
precious, because it included or made possible all
other, namely, that the Danish invasion was a scourge
and no more, that the very life of Christian England
was not crushed out by it ; as might very well have
been, if a monarch of less heroic mould, if one who
could only pray, a monk at heart, and not one who
could both pray and fight, had sat upon the throne at
this crisis of England's fate. Restorer and reviver of
Christian life and learning in the land, his spirit lived
in his son and grandson, scarcely the men of faith that
he was, but in many aspects splendid sovereigns, who
saw clearly the work which they had to do, and did it.
There were no grand characters among churchmen
in the later days of the Anglo-Saxon Church to corre-
spond to these. Milman's judgment is severe but
true : "The Anglo-Saxon Clergy, since the days of
Dunstan, had produced no remarkable man. The
triumph of monasticism had enfeebled without sancti-
fying the secular clergy ; it had spread over the Island
all its superstition, its thraldom of the mind, its reck-

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less prodigality of lands and riches to pious uses,
without its vigour, its learning, its industrial civilization.
Like its faithful disciple, its humble acolyte, its munifi-
cent patron, Edward the Confessor, it might conceal
much gentle and amiable goodness ; but its outward
character was that of timid and unworldly ignorance,
unfit to rule, and exercising but feeble and unbenefi-
cial influence over a population become at once more
rude and fierce, and more oppressed and servile, by
the Danish Conquest/'

Let me in conclusion ask you to observe how this
work of the conversion of England exactly correspond-
ed in time with the triumphant advance of the Mahome-
dan arms. Pertaining as these events severally do,
the one to the extreme West the other to* the further
East, we may easily miss their connexion, might hardly
believe that such connexion existed at all. And yet,
in the providence of God, the one was set over against
the other; and the West was knitting herself into
the strength and unity which it would need for that
collision with Mahomedan power, which sooner or
later was certain to arrive. It is the rise of Islam
with which in my next Lecture I shall deal.

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LECTURE IV.

islAm.

While the ChurcH was making these spiritual con-
quests in the West, securely planting herself in regions
which should henceforth form her most flourishing
seats, organizing herself under a single head, dark
clouds were gathering and perils threatening in the
East, from a quarter where beforehand they might
have looked for the least Nor were these merely tran-
sient perils. The regions which had been her earliest
haunt and home, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt,
North Africa, these all were within litde more than a
century torn from her; neither did these losses of
that first time at all exhaust the losses which she was
thus destined to endure. It was from Arabia that the
storm thus suddenly broke upon the Church, which
was to rend away so many of her fairest branches.
Up to this time Arabia had played little or no part in
the world's history. Satisfied with maintaining their
own independence — and with only some rare and re-
cent exceptions they had defied or eluded the attempts
of the mightiest conquerors to place a yoke upon their
necks — the children of Ishmael had hitherto dwelt
apart in their solitary world. From this they, were
now to come forth, and deeply to stamp themselves,
their manners, their customs, their faith, on a large
and important portion of the globe, and to win for the
46

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ISLAM. 47

faith which they professed the devoted adhesion of
some sixth part of its inhabitants.

The Arabs had been, so far back as history knows
anything about them, a free, warlike people, thinly
scattered over their immense peninsula, their tribes
oftentimes at war among themselves, oftentimes at
war with their neighbours, if the freebooting excur-
sions to which they were addicted deserved so hon-
ourable a name. Whatever original knowledge of
the one God they may have possessed had been grad-
ually overclouded and lost In the times of their
ignorance — for so the Musselmaps fondly temi the
period before their prophet rose, and brought them
back to the primitive patriarchal faith — ^the land had
been full of idols and of idolaters, Sabaean star-worship-
pers and others. Nor did the presence of a consider-
able colony of Jews in Arabia, and of some Christians
as well, do much to dispel the darkness of idolatry
which brooded on the land. Themselves with scanty
knowledge of their own faith, entangled in manifold
superstitions and errors, they were litde fitted to be wit-
nesses against the superstitions and errors of others.
Such very briefly was the political and religious condi-
tion of Arabia when Mahomet was bom (569 or 571.)

Mecca was the place of his birth. Of his early life
legend knows much, history very little. He be-
longed, though himself poor, to one of the noblest
tribes in the land, to that, namely, of the Koreishites."
To the members of this tribe appertained some not
very clearly defined sacerdotal privileges; among oth-
ers the guardianship of the Caaba, a heathen sanctu-
ary or temple, which had been the Holy Place of the
Arabs long before^Mahomet;,, adopting and weaving it

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48 ISLAM.

into his scheme, gave to it its second consecration as
the middle point of Mahomedan worship. His youth
excited no special remark. Too poor to carry on
commercial affairs upon his own account, he transact^
ed those of a rich widow, and this with such fidelity
and prosperous issues, that after a while she bestowed
upon him herself and her fortune. The affairs in
which he*was thus engaged involved many journeys, a^id
brought him in contact with men of various countries
and diverse faiths; for Mecca was the centre of an
active commerce, and sent out its caravans eastward
and southward through the whole Arabian peninsula,
and to many regions beyond. Twice he visited Syria.
Probably in one of these journeys he fell in with that
mysterious Nestorian monk, who plays a part alike in
the Mahomedan and Christian tradition of his life, but
whose relations with him are wrapt in an obscurity so
deep. From him, as some will have it, Mahomet ob-
tained whatever measure of acquaintance with things
Jewish and Christian he possessed. His knowledge,
indeed, of these, however gotten, was small, frag-
mentary, and inaccurate — ridiculously inaccurate one
might call it, were not the whole rise of Islam too
terrible an event for the human race to allow the em-
ployment of such a word — a knowledge not derived
from the Scriptures themselves, but from sources the
most turbid, from Talmudic legends and apocryphal
gospels, and, as we may confidendy affirm, not drawn
at first hand even from these.

Such a portentous birth as a new religion, and that
religion a false one, could scarcely come to pass with-
out labour-pangs corresponding. Nor did it. Of much
we must remain ignorant ; but this much we know,

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ISLAM. 49

that in or about his fortieth year he began to listen to
secret intimations that there was a divine mission for
him to fulfil, while there did not want other whis-
pers that these suggestive voices were not from above,
but below. The crisis of his life had arrived ; fleeing
from men, hiding in mountain caves, deeply sunken
in religious reverie — iepileptic fits his enemies would
have it — ^seeing visions and dreaming dreams, now
lifted up as to heaven, and now cast down as to hell,
it was only after a long interior conflict that his life
wrought itself out for him into any distinctness of
purpose, and that he began to declare, as God's mes-
sage by him to the world. There is no god but God,
and Mahomet is his prophet (6ii).

And yet something of the course by'which he had
been led thus far I think we can trace. Doubdess in
the years which went before he had been deeply im-
pressed with the moral and spiritual degradation of
his country. There are many clear tokens that amid
all the darkness of idolatry, all the falsehoods with
which the land was full, the sense of the unity of the
Godhead had not been quite obliterated from the
minds of his fellow-countrymen. It revived in strength
in his own. He saw truly what lay at the root of
all their miseries and dissensions, so that tribe was
evermore at war with tribe, and family with family ;
namely, that faith in a common Lord, the only true
bond which can bind men together, was wanting. He
saw that their very worship, being as it was the wor-
ship of things which were beneath them, and not of
One who was above, itself instead of drawing upward,
only dragged them down and debased them the more.
/ It was the custom until very lately never to name

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islAm.

Mahomet without some opprobrious addition to his
name — ^"the impostor Mahomet," "the Arabian false
prophet;" while, if I do not mistake, the pendulum is
now swaying in an opposite direction, and we may
soon have Mahomet placed on a level with Moses —
at the least, and the Kofin, if a lower revelation than
the Bible, declared a divine revelation still. The truth,
as I am bold to affirm, is neither here nor there. If by
" impostor " we understand, and we can scarcely un-
stand less, one who devised a cunningly arranged
system of fraud and falsehood, which then, with the
full consciousness that it was such, he sought to im-
pose upon others, impostor Mahomet was not De-
ceiver I believe that he often was, but only where, not
of course without his own sin, he was himself first de-
ceived. On any scheme of simple and self-conscious
imposture it is altogether impossible to explain the re-
sults of his preaching, which has changed the face of
so large a part of the world, given birth to a religion
which for many centuries contended as on equal terms
with the Christian ; an4 which, if waning now like the
moon that is its symbol, yet still subsists a mighty
power and passion in the hearts, and moulding the
lives, of millions of our fellow men. *' Lies," as our
proverb declares, " have no legs ; " at all events lies
which are nothing else but lies have not legs which
will carry them through some twelve hundred years
and more. Instead of dismissing without more ado
this religion as a lie, and its founder as an impostor,
we ought rather to ask ourselves what were the
sources of its strength to divide the light from the
darkness in the man and in the faith, and to do the
justice to both which they have a right to demand.

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islAm. 51

But first to follow to its close the outward history of
the man. His claims to the prophetic office are met
by contemptuous indifference, and then by bitter hos-
tility, no where so bitter as at Mecca ; for he too is a
prophet who finds no honour in- his own country.
Driven from thence at length by the persistent enmity
of his own tribe, and hardly escaping with his life, he
and the few whom he has persuaded to believe in his
mission take refuge at Medina, not so named before,
but now acquiring this name of The City — ^the city,
that is, of the prophet This was in 622, some eleven
years after he had begun to preach. The year is
worth remembering, for the Hegira, or Flight to Me-
dina, is the Mahomedan aera, the date from which they
reckon, as we do from the Nativity of our Lord. At
Medina he found the belief which had been re;fused
him at Mecca, New adherents united themselves to
him. Early friends, scattered from him at the time of
his flight, gathered round him again. The Koreishites,
indeed, still pursued him with implacable enmity, and
many battles were fought with varying success ; these,
indeed, being little more than skirmishes which grew
out of the waylaying of caravans and similar ma-
rauding expeditions. But with all his cause was gain-
ing ground, the number of his adherents increasing ;
and when in 632 he expired, all Arabia recognized
him as her prophet and her king ; and he who at the
first had aspired, at the utmost, to the giving of a law
to his owq people, did now, his horizon having
widened with his success, bequeath to the Chalifs, his
successors, the task of subduing the world to the faith
which he had proclaimed. God, he said, had long
tried gentleness, the meekness of Christ ; — for he did

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52 islAm.

not deny the divine mission of our Lord, nor yet that
of Moses, but always assumed these, and his own as
the complement of them ; — ^but now, wearied out with
the obstinacy of sinners, commanded that they should
either accept the true faith ; or yield themselves tribu-
tary to those who had accepted ; or, refusing both
these alternatives, should be destroyed as rebels
against the Lord of heaven and earth. It was in effect
nothing less, it will be seen, than a war against man-
kind which he proclaimed.

The task which Mahomet thus left to those who
came after him to accomplish they prosecuted with a
zeal and a success which for a while seemed to threaten
the establishment of the faith of Islam on the ruins
of every other religion in the world. Terrible indeed
was the first outburst of the children of the desert from
regions where they had been cooped and confined sO
long. The two recognized powers of the East, the
Byzantine and the Persian Empires, each with an able
monarch at its head, had been weakening one another
by alternate victories and defeats, each in turn bring-
ing the other to the very brink of destruction ; little
dreaming that a power was growing up in secret
which was watching them toth, and in the end should
destroy them both, and one of them within a few
years. On the Byzantine Empire, on some of the
fairest and most flourishing of its Asiatic provinces,
the storm fell first. Exhausted by those long wars
with Persia, defended by ill-paid mercenaries, swarm-
ing with persecuted sectaries, with oppressed Jews,
with subjects disaffected from one cause or another,
and only too well pleased to change their master, that
Empire was wholly unequal to resist the shock. Ten

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islAm.

years had not elapsed since the d6ath of the prophet,
and already Palestine and Syria and Egypt had accept-
ed the yoke; already three out of the four famous pa-
triarchates of Eastern Christendom — ^Jerusalem (636)
and Antioch (638) and Alexandria (641) — if not act-
ually blotted out, retained litde more than a merely
titular existence ; and it wanted but a littie that the
fourth and last had shared their doom ; for Constanti-
nople itself, twice besieged by the Saracens (669, and
again 716), with difficulty weathered the first violence
of the storm, and, except for the opportune discovery
of the Greek Fire, might have succumbed to Ma-
homedan arms, not in the fifteenth century, but the
seventh.

The tide of conquest rolled onward. The Persian
Empire ceased to exist (637-65 1). North Africa was
subdued (665*709). Crossing over from this into
Spain, the Arabs, 01* Moors as they were here called,
from having assimilated to themselves the Moorish
population of North Africa, overthrew in a single bat-
tie the kingdom of the Goths (711), surmounted the
Pyrenees, planted themselves in Aquitaine, and threat-
ened to make all France, and with France all West-
em Europe, their own. It was here at length that
their proud waves were stayed. At the great battle
called sometimes of Poitiers, and sometimes of Tours
(732), one of the "decisive batdes of the world" —
for we must go back nearly three centuries, to the bat-
tie of Chalons (451), before we can find such another
— Charles Martel encountered the armies of Islim
with the gathered chivalry of the West, and earned, or
deserved to earn, his name of The Hammer, inflicting
on them so crushing a defeat that for long centuries

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54 islAm.

all their aggressive pressure upon Western Christen-
dom was arrested, and indeed, has never again revived
in its full strength.

How shall we explain these extraordinary suc-
cesses, the going forth of this novel faith over the
world, thus bringing the world to its feet ? It is not
enough to appeal, in regard of the conquerors, to
their simple habits, their hardy training, their martial
character ; while many of the populations with which
they were brought into conflict were unwarlike and
effeminate, enervated by luxury and self-indulgence,
torn by inner dissensions which they would not lay
aside even in the face of a common foe ; hating one
another so much that the triumph of that foe seemed
preferable to that of a rival Christian sect This might
explain something, but it would not explain all, or
nearly all. We must look deeper than this. The
Mpslem hosts went forth in the confidence of a mis-
sion from heaven. Not Kaled only, but every Moslem
warrior felt himself indeed to be "The Sword of God."
Comparing what they now were with what they had
been in the " times of their ignorance," when they
worshipped dead idols, they felt that they had been
brought into a new spiritual world, had learned now
what was the true glory and dignity of man, namely,
to be the servant of the one God, maker and ruler of
all ; that such servants they were ; whose task it was
to proclaim his power, themselves to submit, and to
compel others to submit, to his will What a truth
was here, to have taken possession of a multitude of
souls ! No wonder that, in the strength of this, innu-
merable tribes, which had hitherto done litde but
mutually tear and devour one another, were presently

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islAm. 55

knit together into a nation, and the worshippers of a
thousand different and discordant falsehoods into that
which bore some sort of similitude to a Church.

And then, if you would look further for an explana-
tion, turn to the conquered. " Where the carcase is,
there shall the eagles be gathered together." This is the
law of God's dealings with men, with nations, and with
Churches. Where they are abandoned by the spirit
of life, and have thus become as a carcase, there the
eagles, the executors of the divine vengeance, are at
hand, who will presendy remove out of the way that
which, suffered any longer, could only taint the air and
defile the earth. The Eastern Church was not alto-
gether such a carcase, and therefore it did not wholly
perish ; but yet we must needs confess that it had
grievously provoked those judgments which now fell
upon it.- How rent was it and torn with countless
divisions ; what mere strifes about words had taken
the place of a zeal for holiness, and how fiercely were
these debated ; how much of superstition was every-
where ; how much which, if it was not idolatry, yet
played most dangerously on the verge of this. We
can regard Mahomedanism in no other light than as
the scourge of God upon a guilty Church. He will
not give his glory to another. He will not suffer the
Creator and the creature to be confounded; and if
those who should have been witnesses for the truth,
who had been appointed thereunto, forsake, forget, or
deny it. He will raise up witnesses from quarters the
most unlooked for, and will strengthen their hands
and give victory to their arms, even against those who
bear his name, but have forgotten his truth.

But it may be very fidy asked, does this negative

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56 ISLAM.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ I ■ - I " ■ -

aspect of Mahomedanism exhaust its whole meaning ;
had it no other purpose in the councils of God ; was
it merely such a scourge ? for if so, why has it been
permitted to exist for long centuries after this its
proper work was accomplished? The rods of God's
anger are for the most/ part, in the order of His provi-
dence, broken and cast aside so soon as ever his work
by them has been accomplished ; but here it has not
been so. Before attempting to answer this question,
let us a Htde consider what js the wqrth of this reli*
gion, not as compared with that decaying form of
Christianity which it encountered, overcame, and sup-
planted in the East, but as compared with the Chris*
tian faith contemplated in its ideal truth and purity.
The name which the Mahomedans give to their faith
is Islam, a word signifying the yielding of oneself
to God. Here, as so often, we have in the name
that which lies deepest and nearest to the heart of
the thing. The central idea of this religion in its
noblest aspect is just the surrendering of oneself
to God; but then it is the surrendering of oneself
to Him as absolute power, not as holy love. We
behold it here at once in its strength and its weak-
ness; in its strength, inasmuch as it does preach
this yielding of self to God, the will of the creature to
the will of the Creator ; in its weakness, in that this
surrender is but the surrender of the weak to the
strong. Power belongeth unto God — this truth the
Mussulman or tnie believer had grasped with all the
energies of his heart and soul ; but he had missed the
truth which ought ever to go along with it, that this
absolute power is wielded by perfect love. The sense
of the difference and distinction between man and

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islAm. 57

God, the creature and the Creator, is mightily real-
ized by him ; and he has been God's fearful avenger
upon those who have dared to confound them; but the
fact of man's likeness to God, and union with God he
not only fails to make his own, but explicitly denies.
Man is for him. God's, servant* JioLhia.saiU A mighty
gulf divides them, and shall divide them for ever.
The very tide, Son of God, is blasphemy in his ears.
This name, first realized in the Everlasting Son, and
then in as many as have received adoption through
Him into a common family, this, which is the truest
witness and guard against all idolatry, he accounts
to be the worst and most hideous idolatry of all.

But Mahomedanism is not merely this falling back
from the blessed truths of the Gospel, it is a still
further retrocession in the spiritual history of mankind.
It falls short, not merely of Christian, but also of Jew-
ish truth. It is a Judaism, not provisional; not looking
on to some better thing which it announces and pre-
pares for; not pregnant with a nobler birth, but a
Judaism stript of its prophecy and its promise, reduced
to a religion of nature, without a priesthood, without a
sacrifice even as it is without any deep consciousness
of sin, without a Messiah. It has no ideal of holiness
after which it invites its votaries to strive ; and indeed
how should it, when the man who stands at its centre,
not without noble qualities, is yet so full of blots and
of bloodstains? You may read the whole Koran
through, without coming on words which in the least
resemble these, "Make me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me. Purge me with
hyssop, and I shall be clean ; wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow."

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58 islAm.

Or turn to it in its social working, as it has ap-
proved itself during the twelve centuries during which
it has been upon its trial. It has all the faults, all the
narrowness of a local religion, which by strange un-
expected successes has outgrown the region of its
birth, a region where it was not without its fitness,
and has obtained a dominion not limited but univer-
sal. If in Christendom the attempt has been often
made to weave into one inextricable woof the king-
dom of God and the kingdom of Caesar, yet, as we
thankfully own, in the end the attempt has always
failed. In Islam it has completely succeeded, and
succeeded, not as the perversion of the Mahomedan
religion, but as the truest realization of all which it
was meant to be. The despotisms of the East are
not accidents, but the legitimate outgrowths of the
Koran, and so long as this exists as the authoritative
book, they too must exist with it. Then again, as has
been truly observed, in the very act of slightly allevi-
ating, the Koran has recognized and perpetuated the
two fatal social evils of the East, polygamy namely
and slavery.

But if all this be so, if Mahomedanism be this back-
ward step in the religious education of mankind, if in
the long run it has no truth to teach the Church which
the Church does not itself already know much better
— for indeed it has nothing original about it, bastard
brother as it is, now of the Jewish and now of the
Christian faith — how shall we explain its continuance,
long since the work for which it was first permitted
has been done ? Only, I believe, we shall understand
Gk)d's purposes in this, when we regard it in its rela-
tions, not to the religions which stand above it, but to

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' islAm. 59

those idolatrous worships which stand beneath it.
I'hus, as it is impossible to deny, how many of the
rude fetisch- worshipping tribes of Africa, sunken in
abject brutal superstitions, have been raised through
it to the worship of one God, to a certain measure of
order and morality, which, so far as we can see, with-
out it they would never have attained. Such a pro-
cess is even now going forward.

For the rest, it must be freely owned that as yet we
see very little of its service as a conducting medium,
as a religion of transition, a schoolmaster to Christ. Its
position is still one of fierce antagonism to the Gospel.
Shall it be so to the end ? Is that mysterious re-ani-
mation of Mahomedan life, which for the last thirty or
forty years has been manifest to all thoughtful obser-
vers, no more than the quickening to a dread activity
of all the Anti-Christian elements in that religion, that
so it may challenge a mightier and a better to a last
struggle, and in that struggle may perish ? Let us
hope better things. The end is not yet. Can it be
for nothing that so much of Christian truth was per-
mitted to be wrought up into that fabric of error, that
the Son of Mary occupies the place which He does in
the Mahomedan theology ? Not merely things good,
but also things evil, and much more than these, things
.which, like that wherewith we have now to do, are
made up of both, a mingled woof of light and of dark-
ness, they all serve God ; and shall be shown at last
to have done their part for the working out of his pur-
pose in the world ; even as in Eastern legend other
spirits beside the good were compelled by Solomon to
take their share and dcT drudging work in the rearing
of the temple of God.

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LECTURE V.

THE CVNVERSTON OF GERMANY.

The Medieval Church of the West found in the
seventh century an immense task before it to fulfil.
The fulfillment of this task was the performance of a
duty, but it was at the same time the conjuring of a
danger. How real and terrible that danger might
prove the Greek Church at this very time was giving
lamentable proof; from which one fair region after
another, the cradle lands of the Christian religion, was
being torn away by the Saracen misbeliever. Hea-
then Germany was hardly a less threatening peril to
Western Christendom ; and, even where it did not
positively endanger existence, was a constant annoy-
ance, infesting and wasting the border lands. Pauses
in the conflict between the two there might be ; but
durable peace was impossible between races on such
different levels of culture, and so wholly antagonistic
. to one another in the highest matters of all.

The missionaries who addressed themselves to the
enormous task of the conversion of Germany may be,
conveniently divided into three groups — the British,
the Prankish, and, entering somewhat later into an
honourable rivalry with these, the Anglo-Saxon. A
word or two upon each of these groups. The British
— they include Irish and Scotch — could no longer find
a field for the exercise of their ministry in England,
now that there the Roman rule and discipline, to
60

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY. 6l

which they were so little disposed to submit, had
everywhere won the day. Their own religious houses
were full to overflowing. At home there was litde
for them to do, while yet that divine hunger and
thirst for the winning of souls, which had so possessed
the heart of St Patrick, lived on in theirs. To these
so minded pagan Germany offered a welcome field of
labour, and one in which there was ample room for
all. Then there were the Prankish missionaries, who
enjoyed the support of the Prankish kings, which
sometimes served them in good stead ; while at other
times this protection was very far from a recommend-
ation in their eyes who were easily persuaded to see
in these missionaries the emissaries of a foe. Add to
these the Anglo-Saxons; these last, mindful of the
source from which they had received their own Chris-
tianity, making it a point to attach their converts to
Rome, even as they were themselves bound to her by
the closest ties. The language which these spoke —
a language which as yet can have diverged very little
from the Low German of Prisia, must have given to
them many facilities which the Prankish missionaries
possessed in a far slighter degree, the British not at
all ; and this may help to account for a success on
their parts far greater than attended the labours of
the others. To them too it was njainly due that the
b^tde of the Creeds, which had been fought and lost
by the Celtic missionaries in England, and was pre-
sendy renewed in Germany, had finally the same
issues there as in England.

It was not until near the opening of the seventh
century that the work of Germany's conversion may
be said to have fairly begun. One noble apparition,

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62 THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

for we can hardly call it by any other name, belongs
to the close of the fifth, that, namely, of Severinus.
Of other eminent missionaries we generally know
something, who they are and whence they come, and
in one way or another what spiritual descent they own.
In him, as in another Melchizedek, all is shrouded in
mystery, till we find him ministering as an angel of
consolation, with a self-offering love which knows no
bounds, to populations of southern Germany reduced
by the frightful anarchy of the times to the lowest
depths of misery and despair. I am afraid that the
names of others who were the foremost to break up
that hard soil, and to sow in its furrows the seed of
everlasting life, well worthy as they are to be held in
everlasting remembrance, must remain little more
than names for you, so impossible is it for me to make
more than briefest pause upon a few. Augustine had
not yet landed on the shores of England, when already
the Scotch and Irish missionaries were busy with tlie
conversion of Germany. Columbanus (d. 615), a
very strenuous worker, and mainly in the Vosges, who
like another Baptist, could stand before kings and re-
buke them ; and Gallus (d. 646), his most illustrious
scholar, called often the Apostle of Switzerland, whose
name lives in the monastery and canton of St. Gall,
lead up the vap. Kilian, (d. 689), too, another
Irish monk, must not be left unnamed; nor yet
Eligius (b. 588, d. 659), goldsmith and saint, the St.
Eloy of Chaucer's Prioress, and well worthy of any
just honour, if not of that which she paid him. But
he with Amandus, whose labours were on the banks
of the Scheldt, into which many times he was flung by
the heathen, and English Willibrord, who also toiled

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY, 63

among the wild tribes of our modem Flanders and
Brabant, belong to the Roman as contradistinguished
from the Celtic group of evangelists.

These are but a handful out of the number of those
whose names, with some notice of their lives, have
reached us. Innumerable others there must have
been, now forgotten of men, but whose names are
written in the Book of life. When we call to mind the
disappointment and defeat, with all of outrage and in-
sult, of wrath and wrong, often even to death, which
these must have endured from wild and savage popu-
lations before their work was accomplished, what
grander fulfilment could we anywhere find of that pro-
phecy of Christ, " I am come to cast fire upon the
earth ?" He had kindled indeed, and who but He
could have kindled and kept alive in so many hearts a
flame so divine ?

At the same time, there were differences in the in-
tensity and obstinacy of resistance to the message of
the truth, which would be offered by different tribes.
There was ground, which at an early day had been
won for the Gospel, but which in the storms and con-
fusion of the two preceding centuries had been lost
again ; the whole line, that is, of the Danube and the
Rhine, regions fair and prosperous once, but in every
sense wildernesses now. In these we may note a
readier acceptance of the message than found place
in lands which in earlier times that message had never
reached ; as though obscure reminiscences and tradi-
tions of the past, not wholly extinct, had helped to set
forward the present work.

Behind this line, now reoccupied by the Church,
there were populous regions in Frisia, in Hesse, in

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64 THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

Thuringia, in Saxony, into which a solitary missionary
had hardly penetrated as yet ; warrior races, which had
never bowed to the superiority of Roman arts and
arms, which had faindy heard of Rome, if they had
heard at all ; races animated by the deepest hostility
against a Gospel of peace. The opposition of these
was altogether different from any which had been en-
countered in the bringing to the obedience of faith
those tribes which had already established themselves
within the limits of the Roman Empire. The German
races, which, when detached from their old seats, had
so easily yielded themselves to the spiritual allure-
ments of Christianity, which had received* baptism and
melted into the mass of Christian worshippers one
scarcely knows how, offered a far more stubborn re-
sistance when sought out in their own primitive haunts,
among their own forests and morasses. It is not hard
to see why. Established in lands which had been
already won to the religion of Christ, and having left
their own holy places, their own fanes and sacred
forests, even their very priests behind them, they were
surrounded, in a manner awed, by a Christian civiliza-
tion so immensely superior to any which they before
had known or imagined, by a worship carried on in
stately temples and with magnificent rites. But in
their native haunts all this prestige with which Chris-
tianity was encompassed was 'wanting. A band of
wandering monks would often be the sole representa-
tives to them of that invisible kingdom, which de-
manded of them that they should submit themselves
to its laws, renounce all or nearly all in which hitherto
they had gloried the most, and accept unknown myste-
rious benefits in return.

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY. 65

But despite of all difficulties in the way, much had
been effected in advancing the frontier of Christi-
anity, many successful aggressions had been made on
the stubborn heathenism of Germany during the
century which intervened between the missionary
labours of Columbanus and the time when Boniface
first put his hand to the plough. Yet for all this, and
recognizing that in a certain measure Boniface entered
on the labours of others, we need have no scruple in
admitting the title of Apostle of Germany which has
been often claimed for him. Winfrid or Boniface —
whether Pope Gregory II. gave him this second name,
or how he got it, is not clear — ^was born near Kirton
in Devonshire, about^ 680. Fair prospects could not
detain him at home, with so glorious an enterprise as
the winning of Germany to Christ beckoning him to
take his share in it Some distinguishing features of
his work are worth your attention. Thus all efforts for
the conversion of Germany which preceded his had
been more or less unconnected and desultory. With
him the organization of the enterprise as a whole
began; laying as he did first foundations, where it
needed to lay these ; building on the fpundations
which others had already laid, where such existed;
strengthening what was weak and tottering ; supply-
ing things which were lacking ; reviving things ready
to die; recalling to Christian order and discipline
populations which had relapsed into heathen practices;
bringing the clergy together in synods, which were
hitherto unknown, or which, having once been used,
had fallen into desuetude and neglect; everywhere
working upon a plan.

In nothing were the early missionaries more worthy

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66 THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

of note and imitation, than in their care to make sure,
so far as this was possible, of the spiritual territory
which they once had won, in the means which they
adopted for impressing an abiding character on their
work. They did not rely for this on any vague Chris-
tian sentiment which by their preaching they may have
aroused among their converts; but, as conquerors,
who not merely overrun but propose also to retain the
lands which they have conquered, ever as they advance
are careful to leave fortified posts behind them, so
these were diligent, by aid of churches and schools
and monasteries which they founded, to hold with a
strong and permanent grasp all which they once had
made^ their own. Among many eminent for this, Boni-
face stands out pre-eminent. What an unerring eye
was his for the discerning of the fittest spot for a
monastery with its cloistral school attached, — Fulda, so
long the centre of the theological culture of Germany,
and notably his -choice, is a signal witness to this, — or
for the dividing out of some land, newly gained to the
faith of Christ, into dioceses, and selecting the spot
where the Bishop's See should be planted. And what
he saw as best, he was able as Apostolic Legate to
carry out Changed and modified as the ecclesiastical
divisions of Germany have subsequendy been, there is
much in them which still attests his practical wisdom,
his far-seeing out-look into the future. The Church
has had few with a talent of organization such as his,
fewer still who have had the opportunity of exercising
this talent on so vast a scale.

It is very interesting to note other points in which
the practical instincts of Boniface led him to adopt
measures most closely resembling those to which the

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY. 67

great Missionary Bishops of our own times, such as
Selwyn and Patteson, have been led for the spreading
of the faith ; and which, alike in his case and in theirs,
were crowned with signal success. He too sought to
win the confidence of heathen chiefe so far that they
were willing to intrust their children to be educated
by him. In these, trained in the school of Christ, he
found afterwards some of his most devoted and effi-
cient helpers ; while it not seldom happened that the
hearts of the fathers were in the end turned to the
children, the fathers through their children won to the
obedience of faith.

Let all of his somewhat excessive submission to the
See of Rome, excessive even for his own time, be freely
admitted; let it be admitted too that he profoundly
impressed the same, for good or for evil, upon the
Churches which he founded ; let it be granted further
that with the gold, silver, and precious stones which he
brought to tl;ie spiritpal building there were mingled
some hay, straw, and stubble, yet for all this the
foundation on which he built was Christ ; and where
that is so, the true abides, the false perishes and passes
away. Then, too, God often makes the faults no less
than the graces of his own servants to serve Him; and
it may very well be a question whether at that epoch of
the Church's life, and with all which in the next centu-
ries was before it, a national German Church, which
did not hold on to Rome, and to such learning and
light as could there and not elsewhere be found, was
possible. I have spoken on this subject already (p. 38),
and shall not repeat what I then said. It is only fair
too, before quitting this subject, to observe that there
was nothing servile in this submission of his. Against

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68 THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

more things than one which he saw amiss at Rome he
raised a clear and manly protest.

And a noble life had a not less noble close. Arch-
bishop of Mentz — he would himself have preferred
Cologne as the metropolitan See of Germany — ^he
might have claimed a peaceful close for so stormy and
laborious a life. But no ; he cannot forget how in his
onward victorious march he had left behind him one
fortress of heathendom untaken. His heart yearns
after the Frisians whom in the early days of his mis-
sion he had sought to bring to the faith, but in vain.
He lays down his dignities, is the simple missionary
once more, revisits with a small band of fellow-
workers the scene of his baffled labours in other days.
Many are now con's^erted, while others are the more
embittered hereby, and at the hands of these he re-
ceives the martyr's crown.

Until within the last few years there was in the land
which owed to Boniface so large a debt, a very hearty
and unquestioning recognition of his work, and this
on the part of Roman Catholic and Protestant writers
alike. With some among the latter all this is now
changed. Attacks of an inconceivable bitterness upon
him and upon the whole character of his missionary
labour follow fast on one another. Not the conver-
sion of the heathen, — for about that, they say, he con-
cerned himself very litrie, — but the overthrow of the
Culdee or Celtic Churches in Germany, guilty of the
unpardonable sin of declining to acknowledge the su-
premacy of Rome, was the life-task which he set be-
fore himself, and which he accomplished with only too
fatal a success. Shameful intrigues at the Court of
Charles Martel and his sons, which should help for-

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY. 69

ward this object, are laid to his charge, and this with-
out a titde of historic evidence to sustain the accusa-
tion, as the accusers themselves are compelled to own.
Even his martyrdom is denied. The authors of his
death, we are now told, were a wild robber horde ;
and Boniface only got what he merited, seeing that,
if he had not neglected his proper duties as a mis-
sionary Bishop, to curry favor at courts, these would
in all likelihood have been converted, have become
good members of society, and so have done him no
wrong. Surely it must be in other interests than those
of historic triith that all this is so persistendy and
passionately urged.

At the death of Boniface the area of heathen Ger-
many was very much contracted, as compared with
what it had been when his mission began. He who
once had so boldly struck and levelled to the earth the
oak of immemorial age, dedicated to the Thunder-god,
had indeed dealt a blow to Teutonic heathenism, from
which it never should recover. But there was still one
stronghold of paganism upon which little or no im-
pression had been made. The Saxon swarms which
had passed over into England had submitted them-
selves for more than a century to the yoke of Christ
Boniface himself was a living witness of the spirit in
which some of them had yielded themselves to Him.
But not so those that had remained in their native
seats, in a Saxony far wider in extent than any which
we know now by this name, and including a large
part of northern and middle Germany. Of Saxons '•^
Tacitus in his muster of the tribes says nothing;
Pliny too is silent. Some conclude from thence that

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

they rose comparatively late to numbers and power
and renown. It is more probable that the name only
was recent, and that we have here some of the most
famous of the tribes of old, the Cherusci and others,
but associated under a new collective tide. The first
mention of Saxons which we have in books belongs
to the middle of the second century ; they do not act-
ually appear on the world's stage till near the end of
the third ; a wild, fierce and stony-hearted race ; in-
deed, as some Latin philologers urged, they announced
as much in their name. Time was when the Saxons
and the various tribes which coalesced under the com-
mon name of Franks had dwelt side by side on the
banks of the Elbe and the Weser, and made common
cause together ; but since the Franks had risen to
such eminency of glory and power, above all since
they had accepted the religion of Christ, the strongest
antagonism had grown up between those who had
been neighbours and confederates of old.

It was not ambassadors of peace who " by the gen-
deness of Christ*' should allure these to take his
yoke upon them. The task of their conversion was
reserved for the strong arm of the mightiest of the
Frankish Kings, even as the manner of the conver-
sion was quite another. Seventeen years after the
death of Boniface the wars of Charles the Great and
the Saxons began. Again and again these last after
an obstinate resistance siibmitted ; again and again,
when Charles was occupied in some remote region of
his vast Empire, beyond the Alps or the Pyrenees, on
the banks of the Eyder or the Theiss, warring with
Lombards, with Moslem, with Danes, with Avars,
they threw off the yoke, renounced the baptism which

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY. 71

was to them the badge of servitude (and which,
among its other consequences, entailed the paying of
tithes, to which they had a rooted objection), and
cruelly wasted the Prankish border-lands, only to "be
as often crushed after a while by his mightier arm.

The whole process of an armed mission, of which
England had known nothing, this reading into the
Gospel of a leaf from the Kor^n, and, in another
sense than that in which Christ spoke the words, this
compelling of men to come in, if judged without refer-
ence to the spirit and circumstances of the time, can
only be absolutely and unequivocally condemned ;
and even with every such allowance may find excuses,
but hardly a justification. Alcuin, with full knowledge
of all the facts, did not Jiesitate to express to his royal
friend and master how litde pleased he was with what
he was doing, did not fail to remind him that he
might constrain men to baptism but not to faith.
And yet it must be admitted that Charles' efforts were
crowned with a signal success. After a struggle,
which with brief intervals lasted for more than thirty
years (from 772 to 803), through the larger^ part, that
is, of his reign, he broke the Saxon .obstinacy at the
last The chiefs who had led the resistance submitted,
and now at length in good faith ; and the people as
usual followed in their train.

No doubt such conversion of nations in a mass
must often and for the larger number have been a
merely external form, with no internal reality to corre-
spond. Indeed, it was often no better with their
chiefs who led the way. Some of the most hideous
perfidies, treacheries, and murders of Clovis belong to
a period subsequent to his baptism ; and his sons and

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72 THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

grandsons, Christians by profession, do not seem to
have unlearned a single heathen vice, or to have
learned a single Christian virtue. Yet with the frank-
est admission of all this, it must not be left out of
sight, that where this wholesale conversion was fol-
lowed up, as it was in the case of the Saxons, with ear-
nest conscientious efforts to bring the converts, not
nominally only but in truth, within the Church's fold,
much was hereby done, or was put in the way of being
done. Public law was henceforward on the side of
true religion. Idolatrous rites and practices were put
down with a strong hand. Schools, churches, and mon-
asteries were built ; bishopricks were founded ; in the
present instance those of Osnabriick (803), of Pader-
born (814), of Munster (805), of Bremen, with others,
followed close on this pacification ; there went forward
a ministry of the Word and Sacraments. And even
where the first generation, which had adopted the faith
by compulsion or because others did, and with litde or
no sincere conviction, was slightly influenced or not at
all, the next, growing up under fairer auspices,-would
show that the training which from infancy it received
had not been in vain. How soon the Gospel struck its
roots, and how deep those roots were, in the once
stony hearts of this Saxon race, is attested by the
poem Heliand (=Heiland) — a versified life of our
Lord which belongs to the reign of Lewis the Pious,
Charles' son ; and which, springing up on Saxon soil,
everywhere attests the religious feeling, deep and
popular, out of which it grew, and to which it appeals.

The Eyder and the Elbe once reached, and Ger-
many being, at least outwardly, brought to the ac-

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY. 73

knowledgment of Christ, there >yas another group of
tribes, nearly related to the Germanic, as their reli-
gion, their language, their whole manner of life at-
tested, which was in like manner to be won for Him.
But neither was the man wanting here. As Germany
had its Boniface, so Scandinavia its Ansgar (b. 801,
d. 865), "Apostle of the North," a gentler, tenderer
spirit than Boniface; with a more introverted eye;
less of a hierarch ; but with less also of his practical
talent, though not coming behind him in the faith
which no perils could daunt, and no failures could dis-
hearten. The one was a lineal spiritual descendant
of St. Peter, the other of St John.

It would be well worth the while to tell, but I cannot
undertake to tell it, how the work of which he traced
the first lines went forward after he was withdrawn ;
how Jutland and Denmark (1027), Sweden and Nor-
way (1019-1033), — ^which last boasts in St. Olaf a very
violent saint indeed, — ^how, I say, these one after an-
other became obedient to the faith ; Odin and Thor,
and all the gods of the northern Walhalla, struggling
fiercely but in vain to maintain their dominion, until
by the end of the eleventh century all Scandinavia, —
the isle of Rugen, last bulwark of Teutonic heathen-
ism, and not converted till 11 68, excepted, — was Chris-
tian ; a result for it most blessed, but scarcely less so
for the whole of civilized Europe. Fon just as at an
earlier day the wild outbursts of the savage Hungari-
ans ceased with their conversion (973), so now at
length the intolerable ravages of the Danes (thus we
name these destroyers, but their pirate hordes were
recruited from all parts of Scandinavia), came to an
end. These in their light ships infesting every coast,

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74 THE "CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

sailing up every river, feared as far as the Adriatic,
where they encountered Saracen rovers from the East
on the same errand of rapine and wrong as their own,
had everywhere found something to destroy; while
yet their most fanatical hate had been reserved for the
church and the monastery, the priest and the monk.
What England suffered from them, and we know how
dismal and disastrous a page in her history this is,
almost all Europe was suffering as well. But now at
length those perennial streams of wrath and bitterness,
which it had been impossible to staunch, were healed
at their source ; and the dreaded Vikings, the Regnars
and the Hastings, or the like of these, with their deso-
lating hosts, sat down to peaceful occupations in their
own lands. All this, with innumerable details of
interest, must remain thus slightly touched on and
no more.

As little can I follow at large the conversion of the
Slavonic tribes, with whom the Latin Church came in
contact so soon as ever the barrier between it and
them, that namely of the unconverted Teutonic races,
had been removed. Before that removal the Greek
Church had made these the objects of its missionary
zeal. This zeal, it is true, can at no time be said to
have equalled that which animated the Churches of
the West ; while yet it is most unjust to charge the
Eastern Church with having wholly abdicated its
duties as a missionary Church, as a Church,* that is,
holding the truth not for its own good only, but in
trust for all the world. Cyril and Methodius, Greek
monks, brothers in blood as in toil, stand out the fore-
most, as Aposdes of the Slavonic races. A deep

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THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY, 75

obscurity, which later investigations have by no means
clearjsd away, rests on the history of both, above all
on their relations to the Roman See. Making no
attempt to reconcile conflicting legends, or to choose
between them, — for we are in a region here more of
legend than of history, — I must content myself with
observing that Bulgaria about 863 received the faith
from Methodius ; Moravia from Cyril ; the Slavonic
tribes owing to the latter, as to a second Ulphilas, an
alphabet, and through that alphabet a literature.

The sacred fire spread from Moravia to Bohemia,
from Bohemia to Poland. It might for some time
have been a question whether these newly converted
lands, or most of them, should not fall to the Eastern
Church rather than to the Western ; yet it did not
prove so. Some indeed remained true to the mother
from whose breasts they first drew the milk of the
word ; and others, like the Bulgarians, who, however,
were not Slavonic by race, but Turanian, were long
an apple of discord between East and West, as they
inclined now to one and now to the other. The
Wends of Pomerania and Mecklenburg, fiercely fight-
ing for their idols, and allowing no peace to their
Christian neighbours, were broken at length by the
might of the Emperor Henry I. and the Ottos ; while
the Prussians, the most civilized of all the Slavonic
races, were in the end rather exterminated than con-
verted by the Teutonic Knights, an Order of military
monks, like the Hospitallers and Templars; these,
occupying their country, repeopled it with German
colonists (i 230-1 283). Of the conversion of Russia,
by far the most important exploit, in this line of
things, of the Eastern Church, there is something

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76 THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.

which must hereafter be said. For the present it will
be sufficient to observe that, at die close of the thir-
teenth century, the receding wave of Moorish popula-
tion in Spain, and a few outlying groups of Finns and
Lapps, were all that remained in Europe not included
within the pale of the Church.

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LECTURE VI.

THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE.

Among the various Teutonic tribes which forcibly
occupied the different provinces of the Roman Em-
pire, and made these their own, I have already men-
tioned the Lombards. Their relations to the See
of Rome, as I then noticed, were almost always
unfriendly, their acceptance after a while of the Cath-
olic faith doing little to abate an antipathy and remove
an estrangement, which might almost seem inborn, so
incapable did it prove of mitigation on the one side or
on the other. The Lombards having taken Ravenna,
and destroyed the Greek Exarchate, and with this
the Imperial ascendancy in Northern Italy, were con-
standy seeking to extend their dominion in the
South as well, often threatening, and more than once
besieging, Rome. The Roman Bishops might turn in
vain for help to their rightful protectors, the Eastern
Emperors, who still claimed their allegiance. They
were far off; with embarrassments and perils more
than enough at home. Unwelcome helpers at the best,
even if there had been any effectual help in them, they
were the more distasteful now as enemies of those
images which the Westerns had learned to honour,
and as branded with the note of heresy for this. The
Popes looked round in their distress for a protector
more to their mind, and one who would not fail them

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78 THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE.

in their need. No nation had shown such devotion to
the Papal See as the Franks, Catholic from their first
conversion, the mightiest of the youthful nations of the
Western world. It was evidendy the policy of Rome
to disengage herself for once and all from the fall-
ing fortunes of the Eastern Empire, and from the
ignominious servitude which the connexion with this
entailed, and to make common cause with abler and
more willing helpers at her doors. To these she
betook herself now.

The alliance between the two had for a long time
past been preparing. Much in the conditions of the
Western world was drawing them more closely to-
gether ; and -it so happened that just when the need
was most urgent, each was in a position effectually to
assist the other ; so that the Roman Pontiffs did not
come merely as suppliants, asking much, but with
nothing to render in return. There was that which
they, and they only, could give, which was of priceless
value in the sight of those whose assistance they im-
plored. The Mayors of the Palace, the virtual rulers
of the Franks, counted that they had reigned long
enough in the name of the Do-nothing Monarchs of
the effete Merovingian race. It was time that this
empty pageant of royalty should cease, that where the
reality of power was there should also be the name.
But it was not a light matter to set aside an ancient
race of kings. A step such as this demanded die
highest religious sanction which the Church could
give ; only so could he who ventured upon it hope to
satisfy his own conscience or the conscience of his
people. But, as men at that day esteemed, such a
consecration of the meditated revolution the Roman

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THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE. 79

Pontiff, as head of Christendom, alone could impart.
Nor was this sanction withheld. Pepin, the son of that
Charles Martel of whom we have heard something
already, and father of a still greater Charles, of whom
we shall presendy hear much more, is crowned King
of the Franks by Boniface, Archbishop of Mentz and
Aposde of Germany, acting herein in the Pontiffs
name (752). Henceforward Pepin makes the cause
of the Church his own. The Lombards meanwhile,
altogether failing to take a right measure of their own
weakness as matched with the Prankish strength, are
rash enough to provoke a conflict which issues in
their defeat by him (755) ; and. when somewhat later
the provocation is renewed, Pavia, the Lombard capi-
tal, is taken, and the Lombard kingdom by the arms
of Charles the Great overthrown (774).

This casting of the whole weight of the Prankish
Monarchy into the Roman scale was one of the deter-
mining facts of medieval history. Charles, when he
wrought this deliverance, already bore the title of Pa-
trician of Rome ; this tide, whatever it may have
meant, having been first bestowed by a grateful Pope
upon his father. But Charles' relations with the
Papacy were destined to be more intimate still. " The
new Constantine ; " as he was often called, he made
over by donation to the Roman See large portions of
the territory* conquered by the Lombards from the
Greeks, and now wrested by him from thq Lombards.
He was thus, with his father who had already done
something of the same kind, though on a more limited
scale, the founder of the temporal dominion of the
Bishops of Rome, — the so-called patrimony of St
Peter dating back to this time. The lands tiius con-

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8o THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE.

ferred upon the Pope he was to hold of the King, as of
his feudal superior, if we may thus anticipate a litde
the use of this language ; for Charles had no intention
of setting up an independent state in the heart of his
own states — least of all one with such pretensions as
were inherent in the Papacy, and inseparable from it.
Those who in after times wrote in the interests of the
Roman Court have presented this act less as a free
gift upon his part, than as a restitution to the Roman
See of that which had been given long before by Con-
stantine, but had since been violendy rent away by
the Lombard arms, and was now restored to its right-
ful possessors. But the whole story of the Gift of
Constantine, which first emerges in a letter of Pope
Adrian I. to Charles (775), but which there were
nevQr wanting some even in the Middle Ages to de-
nounce as a fable and forgery, is now acknowledged
by Roman Catholic writers themselves to be such.

More, however, than this was behind ; the alliance
between the Pope and King was destined to be closer
still. On Christmas Day in the year 800. the Prank-
ish Monarch was worshipping in the church of St.
Peter at Rome, when, as if by a sudden impulse from
above, Pope Leo III. advanced toward the King,
placed a crown upon his head, the whole multitude
present thereupon with loud acclamations hailing him
as Caesar and Augustus, in whom the Empire, which
had been lost so long to the sight and desires of men,
was now revived and restored. This incident was one
of profoundest significance. It is not too much to affirm
that it is the hinge upon which the whole history of
Western Christendom turned for long centuries to
come ; Emperor and Pope, they are the two centres

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THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, gl

round which the whole medieval history revolves, the
two poles which mutually complete one another. It
has been often sought to represent what Leo did as a
divine inspiration of the moment, and one which took
Gharies altogether by surprise. This suggestion is as
old, or nearly as old, as the crowning itself. The
King is reported to have said among his friends, that
ifhe had known what was to happen, solemn as the
festival was, he would not on that occasion have been
present in the church at all. There may very well
have been no distinct concert between the two chief
actors on this evier-memorable day ; but it is hard to
believe that they did not understand one another.
Certainly the marvellous swiftness with which the mul-
titude within and without the church at once compre-
hended, and by their acclamations adopted, this act as
their own, if it does not betray previous arrangement,
shows that the expectation of such an event was, so to
speak, in the air. And who can doubt but that it must
have been often in the mind of Charles himself, how
mightily it would assist him in carrying out the grand
designs of his life, if to all which he wielded of material
power he could add the mysterious and yet most real
consecration involved in this revival in his person of
the Empire of the West ? We know that the moral fit-
ness and political expediency of some step of the kind
had been urged upon him by Alcuin and by others.

The idea of an universal theocratic kingdom as the
divine idea of the government of the world, being one
which the prophecies of Daniel did much to suggest
and to nourish (Dan. ii. 31-45 ; viL), exerted an im-
mense influence on the imaginations of men during
the Middle Ages. In Constantine, the first Christian

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82 THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE.

Emperor, and in his successors this idea had been
realized for a brief while. It had now ceased to exist
in any concrete shape for three hundred and twenty
years ; but it still walked the world as a mighty ghost,
eager to clothe, itself in flesh and blood once more ; an
august reminiscence; which men were the less content
should abide as a reminiscence only, now that the
Byzantine Emperors had forfeited by their crimes
every claim to be considered as its rightful embodi-
ment; and when, as the crowning outrage of all, a
woman, namely Irene, that woman the murderess of
her own son, and usurper of his seat, occupied the
Eastern throne. Shadowy and undefined as might be
the privileges and powers which this dignity conferred,
yet this very vagueness had its advantages ; and cer-
tainly it was not a small matter to stand out by the
acknowledgment of all as the foremost man in all the
world, linking the present with a glorious past, and so,
it might be hoped, with a glorious future. Not, indeed,
that the Emperor was, the only gainer. " The Prankish
alliance, the dissolution of the degrading connexion
with the East, the magnificent donation, the acceptance
of the Imperial crown from the Pope's hand, the visits
to Rome, whether to protect the Pope from his unruly
subjects, or for devotion, everything tended to throw
a deepening mysterious majesty around the Pope, the
more imposing according to the greater distance from
which it was contemplated, the more sublime from its
indefinite and boundless pretensions" (Milman).

Before we proceed any further, let us a Htde con-
sider the man who thus bound up so closely his for-
tunes and the fortunes of his house with those of the

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THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 83

Church, who was willing to assume the official title of
its " Devoted Protector and humble Helper," and to
undertake the duties which this tide involved ; at the
same time accepting from it in return such moral con-
secration as it was able to bestow. Charles the Great
(b. 742, d. 814), whose greatness is, in his French ap-
pellation, indissolubly bound up with his name, great
indeed in peace and in war, in arts and in arms, was
immeasurably the foremost man of his age ; nay, we
must go back to Julius Caesar or to Alexander before
we find another whose figure so fills and occupies the
canvas of history as does his. Gibbon, who has some-
times an eye for greatness even when it displays itself
in a Christian, as notably in the case of Athanasius,
has no eye at all for the greatness of Charles : and it
is not. in his pages that you must seek an adequate
appreciation of the mightiest man whom the Middle
Ages produced. King of the Franks, by which we do
not mean King of the French, for Germany had very
much the largest part in him, while Aachen (Aix-la-
Chapelle) and not Paris was the capital of his do-
minions, he had carried his victorious arms as far as
to the Eyder on the north of Europe, to Pomeraniaon
the east, far into Hungary, to the river Theiss, on the
south. All which the Lombards owned he had not
very long before added to his dominions; while in
Spain, despite of , one severe but isolated check, which
romance has made more of than history would war-
rant, he had driven back the Arabs beyond the Ebro.
Haroun Al Raschid, the Mahomedan Caliph, with
whom Charles exchanged gifts and courtesies, was the
only potentate who could even remotely compare with
him in extent of empire, in glory, or in power.

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84 THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE.

But Charles deserved the title of Great by a better
right than that of the extent of his kingdom, or the
success of his arms. He was indeed the very ideal of
a Teutonic chief, himself foremost in strength and
prowess among his warriors. But he was much more
than this. He spoke Latin; he understood Greek.
The desire which lay closest to his heart was to rescue
whatever remained of the Greek and Latin civilization,
and of Christian theology and learning,— for all
seemed in danger of perishing amid the confusions of
the time, — ^to found schools, attaching them in most
cases to cathedrals and monasteries, as the only hope
of their permanence, and by aid of these to scatter and
to repel the barbarism and darkness which were threat-
ening to make everything their own. He saw, and
saw truly, that in the Christian Church was .to be
found the one principle of all true culture for the
nations under his sway. To the extending the influ-
ence of the Church — I do not mean by this the privi-
leges and wealth of the Clergy ; to the restoration of
its prostrate discipline ; to the raising up of strong bar-
riers against any further pressure of the barbarous
heathen on the civilized western world ; to the turn-
ing, so to speak, the tables, becoming himself the
aggressor, and blessing these against their will, bring-
ing home to them benefits of which they knew and
were disposed to know nothing ; to the making of all
who bowed to his sceptre partakers of the highest
Christian culture which was then within reach, — to
these as its central purposes his life was devoted. .
His contemporary biographer tells us that Augustine's
City of God was the book which he was best pleased
should be read to him at meals. The choice of that

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THE UOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE. 85

book was significant. Unutterably remote as was that
kingdom over which he ruled from the true City or
Polity of Gody it was toward this that he was striving.
The attempt, however faint, to realize this, he had ac-
cepted as the task for which he lived. Nor is it with-
out its meaning that in the familiar circle of his inti-
mate friends, in which each was called by some name,
scriptural or classical, which he had assumed. King
David was that by. which Charles was willing to be
known. .

It has indeed been often urged in disparagement of
him and of what he wrought; that in good part it per-
ished with him, that the darkness, scattered for a mo-
ment, closed in again and swallowed up all. There is
only partial truth in this statement The cloister
schools, which he had founded lived through the tenth
century, generally acknowledged as of the Dark Ages
the darkest of all. In these schools were cherished,
and from these proceeded, those new activities of the
human mind which were to issue in the scholastic phil-
osophy ; the University of Paris being in direct lineal
descent from the Palatine schbol at Aachen, of which
Alcuin was the founder. And if the reign of Charles
does stand out as an isle of light with a night of
darkness encompassing it on every side, so far from
diminishing, this rather enhances the importance and
significance of that brief season ' of refreshing, that
breathing time thus obtained for arts and sciences,
whidi might else have perished, unable to live at all
through the dreary centuries which were before them.

But something more about Charles must not be left
unsaid. The Chinese have a proverb, " Better a dia-
mond with a flaw than a pebble without one." There

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86 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

were flaws and serious ones in the life of Charles
which it is not for me to keep back. A just and
merciful ruler in the main, he avenged on one occa-
sion a Saxoh revolt, under circumstances, it is true, of
extreme provocation, with penalties of blood, which,
as we read, seem to transcend all measure. Then
too in the matter of marrying and putting away of
wives he claimed a liberty, and in his private life a
license, to which he had no more right than the mean-
est serf in his dominions. It is not therefore wonder-
fill that, vast as were the Church's obligations to him,
it did not see its way to make him partaker of the
highest honours which it had to bestow ; and when an
Antipope, Paschal III., ventured on his canonization,
the Church itself neither absolutely disowned, nor dis-
tincriy allowed what had thus been done, and had
found favour with many.

We turn from these to the nobler aspects of his
life ; nor, when all is said, need we shrink from affirm-
ing that, if the Roman Empire was to be revived,
Charles was well-worthy that it should be revived in
him ; if there should be again a Lord of the World,
that he should be that lord. And yet for all this what
a multitude of questions suggest themselves to us,
when we seek to estimate the precise significance of
this event, to define to ourselves with any clearness
what the relations were in which Emperor and Pope
should henceforward stand to one another. Thus, by
yrhat right did the Pope claim to revive in the person
of Charles the Western Empire, or, to use the favour-
, ite language of a somewhat later day, to translate the
Empire from the Greeks to the Germans ; seeing
that as yet the Popes did not arrogate to themselves

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THE HOL Y ROMAN EMPIRE. 8 ^

to be the givers or the takers away of kingdoms ? If
not as Pope, was it as acting under an immediate
divine inspiration ? Or was it as representative of the
City of Rome, even as the rabble of that City claimed
often in after times that the election lay with the Ro-
man people, which people they styled themselves?
Was it clear to either or to both into what relations
they were entering, one with the other, relations of
mutual dependence, each in some sort owning the
other as superior? Thus the Emperor consented to
receive the Imperial crown at the hands of the Pope,
and only after this coronation to assume the Imperial
title ; an arrangement so liable to misinterpretation
that already within little more than half a century
Pope Nicholas I. declared this crowning of the Em-
peror by the Pope to be a grant to him of the Empire
by the Roman See, an assertion in later ages repeated
• again and again. Once more, could the Pope with-
hold this coronation on the ground of irregularity in
the election ? or unworthiness in the person elected ?
or on any other plea ? could he, that is, hinder whom
he would from obtaining the Imperial dignity? or,
where there was a disputed election, did it lie with
him to determine which among the competitors had
'been legitimately chosen? But then, on the other side,
'.the Emperor was not less Emperor at Rome than
elsewhere. The Pope was in a manner his vassal, his
man, swore fidelity to him, recognized him as the su-
preme Judge before whom he might be summoned to
make answer to charges brought against him. And
just as none might assume the tide of Emperor, till
anointed and crowned by the Pope, in the same way
before a Pope, however canonically elected, could be

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88 THE HOL Y HOMAN EMPIRE. -

consecrated, it was necessary that tiie election should
be confirmed by the Emperor.

It must at once be evident thstt in this " Roman Con-
stitution," as at a later day it was called, there were
innumerable unsettled questions, a very seed-plot of
ckxasions of strife, such as would be sure to spring up
so soon as ever the memory of mutual benefits had a
little faded away. Nor is it wonderful to read-^of
German armies continually crossing the Alps to re-
dress some real or fancied wrong committed against
the majesty of the Empire, to compel the coronation
of an Emperor elect, unduly withholden, or to annul
the consecration of a Pope, which no due confirmation
had preceded. It was meant that the two powers, the
secular and the spiritual, should mutually sustain one
another, each with the weapons which were most pro-
perly its own; but suspicions, jealousies, conflicting
interests, incompatible ambitions did not fail to set
them very soon at division. The two swords, of which
we are to hear so much, were continually clashing;
and the story of this clashing of theirs constitutes a
large portion of the history of the Middle Ages. In
treating of this collision we shall find it impossible to
give our sympathy without reserve to the wielders of
the one sword or of the other. Both are right, and
both are wrong ; or rather both contend for a right,
and with that right contend also for a wrong. But of
all this there will be other and frequent occasions
hereafter to speak.

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LECTURE VII.

THE ICONOCLASTS.

Art had been so long and so completely in the ser-
vice of the impure religions of heathendom, was so
steeped in their spirit, had so often ministered to what
in them was worst, that it is nothing wonderful if the
early Church regarded it as something with which the
faithful could hold no friendly relations, which they
could only reject and condemn. It would be long to
detail — and the story belongs to ages anterior to those
of which we are treating — by what steps this extreme
aversion litde by litde abated its intensity, gave way
to other feelings, until, though not without struggle
and remonstrance, Art won for itself a place first in
the houses of men, and then in the house of God; and
such a place in the end that the danger was no longer
lest the Church should in a narrow spirit of intolerance
exclude and ignore that which, kept within its proper
limits, might render to her excellent service ; but lest
Art should abuse its victory, forget its proper subordi-
nation, and intruding into a region not its own, prove
not a helper but a hinderer to any true worship of
God in the Spirit It would indeed be a mistake, and
no where a greater mistake than in. telling that story
on which we are about to enter, to suppose that it was
Art as Art, and for its sesthetic merits, which had won
this acceptance. Rather it had done this, as being the

M 89

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90 THE ICONOCLASTS.

most effectual means by whi(3i supersensual things
might be brought to the level of men's senses, and
men relieved from the effort of lifting themselves up
into a higher world, this higher world having rather
been brought down to their level by aid of representa-
tions appealing first to the eye.

The time, however, at length arrived when excesses
in this direction provt>ked a reaction, and a violent
attempt on the part of some to return, not to the
simple and naive intolerance of the primitive Church,
for that was impossible, but to a disallowance, forcibly
imposed, of all those outward helps to devotion on
which the faithful, for good or for evil, had learned to
lean, and which through long use had grown into mat-
ters of necessity to many. In the Greek Church, as
might have been predicted beforehand, the batde
about "the images, their abolition or retention, was
fought out ; the noise and wild tumult of this conflict,
this tempest of wrath and wrong, filling for it the
eighth century and reaching far on into the ninth.
Not indeed that the Western was not continually
drawn into the quarrel, which was fraught with im-
mense and abiding consequences, theological, ecclesi-
astical, and political, for both ; destined mightily to
help forward the disruption of whatever ties still knit
the West to Constantinople, and furthering to the
same extent the birth and growth of a purely Latin
Christianity. If herein there was gain, yet in other
aspects it would be difficult to imagine anything more
disastrous than this ill-omened struggle proved. Divi-
ding as it did the East from the West, it embittered
them in a thousand ways the one against the other;
while the East, in addition to this separation, was itself

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THE ICONOCLASTS. 91

still further divided, torn by cruel intestine strife; some
of its greatest princes wholly alienated from their peo-
ple, and the people from their princes ; and this at a
time when all the forces of the East and West com-
bined, would not have been too many, if any effectual
resistance was to be ipade to the Saracen invasion.

In a recent Lecture on the rise and early spread of
Islamism I dwelt on the marvellous successes which
waited during the first century after the death of its
founder on the Moslem arms. The controversy of
which we treat to-day is closely connected with these
events. The outer bonds which connect them n\ay
seem very slight, but the inner are very real indeed. I
spoke in that Lecture of the hatred of idols which the
followers of the Arabian prophet deeply felt, and
missed no opportunity of displaying ; of the strengtli
which they found in the proclamation of the unity of
the Godhead, and in the faith that they were raised up
— and in this surely they were not altogether mistaken
— as witnesses against the idol-worshippers of the
world, against all who in any shape or under any plea
gave to the creature the glory due only to the Creator.
They were still in the full career of victory at the be-
ginning of the eighth century ; Constantinople, twice
besieged by a Saracenic army and fleet (668, 716),
hardly escaping a catastrophe that would have abridged
by some eight centuries the course which the Eastern
Empire was destined in the providence of God still
to fulfil

The principal agent in working out the second and
the most memorable of these deliverances was Leo
III., Leo the Isaurian as he is called (717-741), a
hardy mountaineer, who by courage and conduct had

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92 TBB ICONOCLASTS.

raised himself from the humblest rank to be the found-
er of a new dynasty, and who offered in many ways
a singular contrast to the effeminate princes, "the
purple-bom," who had gone before him; though re-
sembling them only too faithfully in his inability to
distinguish the lines which divide temporal and spirit-
ual power. We can scarcely be wrong in assuming
. that he learned his abhorrence of images from those
with whom he had been brought into hostile contact.
He is taunted in the polemics of the time with having
taken the Arabs for his teachers ; and the taunt was
pcobablya true one. He had seen the strength which
the Islamites found in the one grand truth which
among so many falsehoods they held, and he thought
to make this strength his own. Probably he could ill
brook the title of idolater, which the Mussulmans, and,
where they dared, the Jews, cast in the teeth of the
Christians. He will be an ecclesiastical reformer ; he
will put down the worship of images (726) ; failing in
this, and angered by his failure, he will abolish them

(730).

In meddling thus, Leo does but follow the tradi-
tions of the Byzantine Caesars. Almost every past
Greek Emperor had been a theologian in his way,
and generally a persecutor to boot A rough sol-
dier, bred in camps, he seeks to carry his resolution
through by courses the most violent and arbitrary;
while indeed the mischief, which was a most real
one, demanded to be dealt with in a manner the most
careful and considerate. Entwined as the error was
with so much which was not erroneous, it needed to
be disengaged from this with a firm, yet also with a
gende and a reverent hand, with such care as men use

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THE ICONOCLASTS.

when they take down ruinous houses which adjoin to
temples, lest the sacred should be involved in the
same ruin with the profane. There was no such
reverent heedfulness here. Doubtless the images
often and in many ways ministered to superstition.
Even those who were most earnest for their retention
were compelled to allow as much. Men prostrated
themselves, burned incense, before them, counted that
prayers made at the shrine of one image were more
prevailing than those made at the shrine of another ;
with much more, deplorable enough, in the same
kind.

But the images, — ^which let me explain by the way
were not sculptures or statues, for these the Greek
Church has never allowed, but coloured portraitures
on a plane surface or, more rarely, mosaics, — ^were
precious to many, had endeared themselves to them
by immemorial use, were associated for them with all
which they had learned to hold the most sacred. Of
all this however the reforming Emperor took no
heed. The army was enthusiastically devoted to a
leader who had brought back victory to its standards ;
and with the army upon his side he did not doubt that
opposers and opposition might without much diffi-
culty be trotten under foot. But he had not taken
account of all with whom he would have to reckon.
The Patriarchs of Constantinople were for the most
part the passive instruments of the Imperial will ; but
now the aged Germanus resists ; and another, more
prompt for every servile and shameful compliance,
must be chosen in his stead. His resistance indeed,
and that of the tumultuary multitude of the city, might
have profited litde. Even the trumpet notes of John

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THE ICONOCLASTS.

of Damascus, the most famous theologian of his time,
who, dwelling at Jerusalem under Moslem protection
and beyond the reach of the Imperial anger, incited the
faithful by his writings as to a Holy War, might have
sounded in vain, if it had not been for that other
army which Leo had left out of account In th^
monks he encountered opponents as rude, as resolute,
and as fanatic as himself, men too whose interests as
well as whose passions were bound up in the issues
of the conflict, for it was chiefly from their workshops
that the images proceeded.

Let us pause here and consider for a little what
the monks, who found the violence, and the theolo-
gians, who found the arguments, said for themselves
in reply to charges, of which the head and front was
this, namely that in using and in defending the use of
these images, they were breaking and defending the
breach of the Second Commandment Yes doubdess,
they replied, such a commandment, and that to be
taken in the letter, was giv^n to the Jews, though
even for them it admitted tacit qualifications. The
Cherubin, shadowing the Mercy Seat, not a few things
in Solomon's temple, — as the twelve oxen upholding
the molten sea ,(i Kin. vii. 25), and in his house the
twelve lions beside the ivory throne (i Kin. x. 20), —
were each and all a modifying of the strict letter of
this commandment And then, in respect of that
which offended the most, narfiely pictures of our
Blessed Lord Himself, it was quite intelligible, they
replied, that at an early stage in the religious educa-
tion of mankind, men should be absolutely forbidden
to make a likeness of Him whom no man had seen nor
could see. But since the Incarnation, and by the

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THE ICONOCLASTS.

Incarnation, this all was changed. God had appeared,
visible to the eyes of men, and had taken the human
nature into personal union with Himself. The picture
which we make of Him, they said, is a confession upon
our part in act, as elsewhere we make confession in
word, of the mystery of the Incarnation. You con-
demn this picture, they retorted on their accusers,
because it is a setting forth of Christ in his humilia-
tion ; but seeing that it was love which had brought
Him to that low estate, it is indeed a setting forth of
Him in his highest glory. So especially Theodore, Ab-
bot of the Studion (d. 826) ; who, belonging to the
latest period of this long struggle, is quite the most
attractive figure in it, and the most notable theologian
whom it produced. The defenders of the images
further urged, though this was capable of receiving
quite another turn, that the Iconoclasts were weaken-
ing the whole position of the Church as against its
nearest and deadliest foes. What were they in fact
affirming but that in all these matters the Ara-
bian Anti-christ was right, and the Church of God
wrong ?

It is only fair too to state that the most zealous
favourers and promoters of this ill-directed homage
always disclaimed with indignation the charge of offer-
ing to the images any reverence which did not differ
in kind, and not merely in degree, from the worship
which they offered to Almighty God, calling it by
altogether a different name. We shall very proba-
bly feel that in these distinctions which they drew be-
tween the "honour" which they gave, and the ."wor-
ship " which they withheld, there lay no slightest justi-
fication of that in which they allowed themselves ; but

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96 THE ICONOCLASTS.

these distinctions acquit them of idolatry, and it is the
merest justice to remember this.

Let me add a word or two more before resuming
the historic thread of the narrative. No one, I am
persuaded, who has studied with any care the ques-
tions which in this controversy were gradually brought
into debate, but will feel, and will ever more strongly
feel, that much larger and much deeper issues were
here for determination than might at first sight appear.
And yet for all this the whole theological struggle was
only too characteristic of the Eastern Church. As-
suredly the masculine common sense of the faithful in
the Western would have chosen, even in the eighth
century, some better field than this could ever prove,
for fighting the battle of the Incarnation ; or, if com-
pelled to fight it on this, would have cleared the field
betimes of all which encumbered it, which obscured or
hid what was really at issue, and has rendered it im-
possible to give more than a most limited sympathy
to those who believed that, as against their present
foes, they were contending for the central truth of the
faith.

I sh^U not attempt to follow the details of an un-
lovely struggle, in which all, if they had a right for
which they fought, contrived also to put themselves
wofuUy in the wrong ; I shall pass quickly over the
story of savage tumults more savagely repressed, of a
throne shaken to its foundations, and a Church miser-
ably torn asunder. Leo was succeeded by a son, Con-
stantine Copronymus (741-775), as distinguished a
soldier as himself, of a will as iron as his own. Fa-
natically resolved to carry through his father's work,
he will yet give it the consecration which hitherto

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THE ICONOCLASTS. 97

it has lacked. It is not difficult for him to bring
together a Council, at which no Patriarch indeed, but
338 Bishops are present What amount of freedom
reigned at this Council, which called itself the seventh
Council of Constantinople (754), may be guessed from
the fact, that by it the use of images was condemned
as idolatry without one dissentient voice. And now
every priest, every monk, every layman was required
to give in his separate and personal adhesion to
this condemnation. Multitudes yielded ; but not the
monks. No violence was spared — ^scourgings, muti-
lations, Windings, imprisonments, exiles, cruel mock-
ings, every device of insult and of wrong, all were
without stint employed to force their submission ; and
with so inexorable a purpose that, when the four and
thirty years of Constantine's reign were ended, it
might have seemed as if at last he had, carried his
purpose through. A monk was no longer anywhere
to be seen. The monasteries had been turned into
barracks or stables. The images had wholly disap-
peared from the churches ; only, it is true, to be more
carefully cherished in the secret of the chamber and
of the heart On the walls of the churches, where
used to be painted incidents from the life of the Lord,
or from the legends of the saints, there were now de-
picted landscapes, hunting scenes, vintage revels, the
profane temper of the destroyers, irreligious Puritans
we might call them, not caring to conceal itself any
more in this day of triumph.

Doubdess nothing has been lost in the telling of
the insolences, the outrages, the cruelties of which the
Iconoclasts were guilty. In the extreme poverty of
contemporary records^ we are mainly dependent on

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98 THE ICONOCLASTS.

the adversaries who crushed them, and on these writ-
ing a full century after the events, for our knowledge
of the acts and the actors ; and such hostile reporters
may very well have made in their narration^that uglier
still, which was ugly enough before.

But to return. It was but a shortlived triumph
which the Iconoclasts could boast, and one destined
presendy to prove no triumph at all. An intriguing
woman, the Empress Irene, finds herself guardian of
her son, a minor, and craftily uses the opportunity to
undo all which so painfully, and at a cost so enormous,
had been effected. And how the Second Council of
Nicaea (787) annuls all which the Iconoclast Council
had decreed. It is true that under Leo the Armenian
(813-820), the enemies of the images are again in the
ascendant, that there remains one long and violent
struggle more. But again a woman, Theodora, her-
self the widow of an Iconoclast Emperor, working with
the spirit of the time, was strong enough to overthrow
an edifice which only stood so long as the Court and
army sustained it; but which, their support withdrawn,
collapsed at once (842). The images in solemn pro-
cession are restored to their place in the churches ;
and the fury of the storm is now felt to have spent it-
self so entirely that a feast, called the Feast of Ortho-
doxy, is instituted to commemorate in all after time
the final and complete triumph over the image-break-
ers which has been gained.

Throughout this protracted conflict the Church of
Rome had thrown her whole influence on the side of
those who sought to retain all the abuses connected
with the images. This was inevitable. She was herself
entangled too deeply in the superstitious use of these

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THE ICONOCLASTS. 99

to be able .to give wise and moderate counsels to the
sister Church in the East But if not from her, it was
yet from the West that the wisest words came in the
end — from the Prankish Court of Charles the Great.
We may regard the Four Caroline Books, — so named
from him, and put forth in 790, three years after the
Second Nicene Council, — as his manifesto, and that of
the accomplished theologians, Alcuin the chief, whom
he had gatiiered round him. In this book a line is taken
alike remote from both extremes. And first there is
in it a distinct condemnation of all religious homage
done to the image, or in and through the image to any
whom it may represent, let this homage be reduced to
what minimum it may, explained or explained away as
men will — a vigorous refutation of the arguments by
which it was sought to justify such homage. This is
the ground-tone of the book, the more worthy of note
as being direcdy in the teeth of the contemporary
utterances from Rome. But so much thus plainly set
down, the author or authors can the more confidendy
reprove the fanaticism of the image-breakers, who
would recognize no moral difference between these
images and the idols of the false gods of heathendom ;
who would not be content until they had made a clean
sweep of all wherewith litde by litde Christian men
had adorned and beautified their churches, or by which
they had sought to maintain and quicken a lively im-
pression in their own minds or in others' of the sacred
events and persons of the past Man is not all soul,
it is here urged; but body and soul; and being thus
sensuous in part, may lawfully use sensuous helps.
Such is the tone and tenor of this very memorable
book.

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lOO THE ICONOCLASTS.

I hs^ve not, you will have observed, invited you to
deplore very deeply the ill success attending a move-
ment which was yet directed to the abatement of a
most serious mischief in the Church. That the
Church should have laid the axe at the root of this,
and with this, of other abuses, should have recog-
nized the steps by which it had been unconsciously
drawn away from the simplicity of Christ, and there-
upon should have retraced these steps, such a course
would have been a matter of most earnest thanksgiv-
ing. But what profit could accrue to a Church through
a reformation imposed by the arbitrary will of a mon-
arch, and carried through with such violence and out-
rage and wrong as was this? A Pope virtually
claiming to be Emperor as well, a priest-king, is bad
enough, and this the history of Western Christendom
has abundandy shown ; but an Emperor who demands
also to be Pope, a king-priest, this, which was the per-
sistent claim of the Byzantine autocrats, is infinitely
worse.

And over and iabove this fault which clung to the
whole endeavour, namely that it was a violent intrud-
ing of the secular power into a region not its own,
there were other faults cleaving to it which gave suffi-
cient evidence how barren of all good it would cer-
tainly have proved, if success had attended its efforts.
Reformations in religion can only be carried out to
any profit by those whose hearts God has touched, by
such as are themselves religious. There must at all
events be among the reformers a sufficient number of
these to leaven with some sort of higher leaven the
lump of the worldly, the self-seeking, the profane, who
will put themselves forward as sharers in the work.

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THE ICONOCLASTS. iqi

But assuredly no one will affirm that the fierce princes
and their fierce satellites, the prime workers here, were
animated by any earnest love to Christ ; on the con-
trary, the hatred of many for the images had passed
into a hatred of those whom the images represented.
No one will deny that, with rarest exceptions, all the
religious earnestness, all which constitutes the (Juick-
ening power of a Church, was ranged upon the other
side. Had the Iconoclasts triumphed, when their work
showed itself at last in its true colours, it would have
proved to be the triumph, not of faith in an invisible
God, but of frivolous unbelief in an incarnate Saviour.
I can close this Lecture with no better or wiser
words than those which Milman supplies: "There was
this irremediable weakness in the cause of Iconoclasm:
it was a mere negative doctrine, a proscription of those
sentiments which had full possession of the popular
mind without any strong countervailing excitement.
The senses were robbed of their habitual and cherished
objects of devotion, but there was no awakening of an
inner life of intense and passionate piety. The cold
naked walls from whence the Scriptural histories had
been effaced, the despoiled shrines, the mutilated
images, could not (iompel the mind to a more pure
and immaterial conception of God and the Saviour.
Hatred of images, in the process of the strife, might
become, as it did, a fanaticism, it could never become
a religion. Iconoclasm mig^ht proscribe idolatry ; but
it had no power of kindling a purer faith."

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LECTURE VIII.

MONASTICISM.

A REHABILITATION — for this I believc IS the word — of
men and things, of some that might reasonably have
despaired that such would ever include them, has gone
forward of late years to a very remarkable extent. If
you ask me what that unusual word means, I cannot
answer better than by saying that it has been long, if
not in English, yet in law-French, a word to signify
the restoring and replacing in a position of esteem and
honour, or, it may be, of authority, one who, righdy or
wrongly, had forfeited such position, making him
"habile" or able for this once more ; — or, not adhering
so closely to the image which the word suggests, it
might be described as a moral whitewashing of such
as in men's sight were as blackamoors before. This
rehabilitation has included men such as Tiberius,
Nero, Richard III., Alexander Borgia, Marat, and
Robespierre, has not excluded institutions such as the
Spartan Krypteia and the Spanish Inquisition. But it
has also included persons and things witl^Jpetter right
to its benefits than any of these. It is flothing won-
derful that medieval Monasticism has profited by the
reopening of enquiries, which some on fery imperfect
information had too hastily assumed to be closed.
Whether its rehabilitation will be complete, is another
question. It may do much to explain and justify its

103

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MONASTICISM,

103

existence, to show the debt which the world and the
Church owe to it, and yet fall short of this.

With this much of introduction let us enter upon
the subject before us, which is very far from an easy
one. The whole medieval Church, with its grand fea-
tures of devotion, of heroic self-sacrifice, with all its
strivings after the highest, and then this same with its
terrible aspects of evil, of evil which has often seemed
as if it were inextricably bound up with its very
existence, is a constant perplexity to the student who
takes history in earnest, who is not satisfied with
merely knowing tbit such and such things have been,
but would fain know also why they have been, and to
what ends they served ; above all is it a ritystery and
a perplexity to him who regards the Church as a divine
institution for good, and only for good, in the world.
Some, attracted and awed by the noble aspects which
the Church in those ages presents, have resolutely
shut their eyes to all which was otherwise in it, have
fallen down and worshipped, countings all succeeding
ages a declension from ages of faith which have for
ever passed away. Others, repelled and shocked by
the frightful mischiefs of those times, have had no
eye except for those mischiefs, and have refused to
believe any good about them at all.

Now if the evil were separable from the good, so
that, disentangling these the one from the other, we
could approve the good, and condemn the evil, the per-
plexity would not be so serious ; though it must be
freely owned that this process of taking and leaving,
allowing and condemning, is attended by very real
dangers of its own in its reactive influenc^lta the
minds of them who thus become judges of meii|«piay

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I04 MONASTICISM,

be immeasurably greater and better than themselves.
But in this woof which we are here considering the
dark threads and the light are not capable of being
thus disentangled the one from the other. This sense
of an immense perplexity, of contradictions which it is
impossible to reconcile, perhaps no where presses upon
us so heavily as when we contemplate certain institu-*
tions which we cannot regard as accidents of the
medieval Church, for they are of its very essence, not
as the fringe of a garment, but as in a great degree
the very garment itself. Imagine the Papacy, imagine
the Monastic Orders, both, or either of them with-
drawn, and, as a period of Church history with distinct
features of its own, the Middle Ages would simply
cease to exist Of the Papacy I shall hope to speak
by and bye. We have now to deal with Monasticism.
We cannot abdicate our right to judge it. Every
great moral phenomenon, and this was a very great
one indeed, we are bound to have, or to endeavour to
have, some judgment about, whatever the dangers may
be which wait upon such judging.

To me it seems undeniable that so soon as ever the
better moral forces, which even at the beginning were
not the only ones, began to ebb, there sprung out of L
the Monastic system mischiefs the most enormous.
To this we must stand, as by all history attested only
too well; while yet again and again we ask ourselves
concerning those ages of the Church, How could they
have done without it? what substitute for it did they
offer? The missioners who went as upon the forlorn
hopes of the early Middle Ages, who wrought the
conversion of England, of Germany, of Scandinavia, of
Slavonia, had been trained in the cloisters of lona, or

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MONASTICISM,

105

of St Gall,— centre of missions for all South-Western
Germany, or of the Benedictine Abbey of New Cor-
bey, of which it is not too much to say that the whole
Scandinavian mission was fed from that single house,
or of some other religious foundation of like kind.

And the same difficulty besets us, though not per-
haps quite so strongly, when we contemplate otlier
functions which the monasteries and the monks fulfilled
in those long ages, sometimes so dreary, almost al-
ways so tempestuous, which connect the ancient and
mckiem world. Again and again we put to ourselves
these questions. Who during those dark times would
have kept alive the sacred fire of learning, if these had
not been there ? How would that remnant of the
precious treasures of ancient literature which has
escaped the shipwreck in which so many had perished,
have reached us except for them ? What would have
survived of higher culture without the cloister schools?
of art, if these had not cherished the sparks which
might else have been quite trodden out ?

Nor is this all. The world might have struggled on
without literature and without art But they were
the monks who taught, not so much by precept as by
example, that lesson of such surpassing worth, namely
that in the labour of the hands there is dignity and
not degradation. Itnmense was the gain when the
Benedictines gave a religious consecration to the cul-
tivation of the earth by the linking of this with prayer
and the reading of Scripture, effectually and for ever
redeeming this labour from the dishonour which sla-
very in the old world had impressed on an occupation
which was then regarded as the proper business of
slaves. And never was there more urgent need of

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I06 MONASTICISM.

such a moral glorification of labour than in those wild
and savage times, when the earth, trampled, desolated,
ruined by the march of successive barbarian hosts, its
former tillers scared away or slain, required to be
again, as from the beginning, subdued by patient toil
to the service of man. We sometimes hear the igno-
ble observation — it used to be heard much oftener —
that the monks knew how to pick out the best and
most fertile spots for themselves ; when indeed it
would be truer to say that they knew how to make
that which had fallen to them — it was often the waste
or the morass which none other cared to cultivate —
the best ; but this by the sweat of their brow and the
intelligent labour of their hands.

But freely admitting the debt and the greatness of
the debt, can we help observing concerning the mo-
nastic ideal of the highest Christian life, — ^the separat-
ing off, that is, of innumerable companies of men on
one side and on the other of corresponding compa-
nies of women, to live their lives apart, — ^that it is a
human invention, running counter to a divine? Of
the monks of the West must we not say that they
shared with their Eastern prototypes the inevitable
disease of seeming to be protesters against family
life as gross and secular, witnesses that the sexes will
be most holy when kept most asunder ? Now, with-
out gainsaying the accidental and occasional benefits
which sprang from such an arrangement, yet such
a witness, so borne, must have reacted most inju-
riously on the whole family life of Christendom, lower-
ed its tone, and gone far to empty it of the beauty
and consecration which according to the divine idea of
the constitution of human society It should have borne.

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MONASTICISM.

107

What can we say to thqse things ? What indeed
but briefly this, namely, that He who is the King of
Ages does in each age for his Church the best which
the moral materials He has at command will admit.
Men are free agents, with the choice therefore of
working for God or working against Him. He who has
willed to be served only by the free can only use the
materials which He finds, whether these are absolutely
the best or not He will give partial allowance to
much which is very far from being according to his
perfect and highest will, shows Himself the one su^
preme and absolute Work-master, in that with mate-
rials and instruments so imperfect He brings about his
purposes, making all things and, in one way or other,
all men to serve Him ; not suffering the evil which
may have mingled with his good to defeat it; but
rather causing the good to operate so effectually as
often to rob what was not good of its worst power to
harm.

Thus much said by way of introduction, let me
sketch very shortly some aspects of Monasticism in
the West, so far as it falls within the times of which
we treaty

The first origins of Monasticism, how it took its rise
in Egypt, where it was in a manner indigenous ; how
it spread over the neighbouring lands of Syria and
Palestine ; how it was brought by Athanksius to the
West, found earnest resistance there at the first, but in
the end an acceptance which should render it a mightier
factor in the Church life of the Occident than it had
ever been in the lands of its cradle, — showing itself
far mpre flexible, far abler to adapt itself to new con-

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loa MONASTICISM,

ditions, to rise to novel heights ; how it suffered by the
confusions and shared the disorders of the fifth and
sixth centuries, was reduced to some sort of order and
discipline by Benedict of Nursia (d. 543), who, in-
tending to furnish a Rule for his own convent of
Monte Cassino, devised one of such practical good
sense that it was adopted over the entire West; — all
this belongs to a time anterior to that with which we
have to deal, and with this I have a right to assume a
certain acquaintance upon your parts.

In the disastrous times which followed the death of
Charles the Great and the failure of his scheme to re-
organize the Western world under a single head, the
discipline of the religious houses fell with everything
else ; fell, not perhaps quite so soon, yet by the end
of the ninth century had fallen almost as low as it was
possible to fall. But here symptoms of a moral re-
action showed themselves earlier than eIsewhere.^vThe
revival dates from 910, the year of the foundation^ of
the Monastery of Clugny in Burgundy, which was des-
tined to exercise an enormous influence on the future
of the Church. While matters at Rome were at their
worst, there were silently training there the men who
should inaugurate a new order of things (see. p. 119).
Already, so one said at the time, the whole house of
the Church was filled with tffe sweet savour of the
ointment there poured out It followed that wherever
in any religious house there were any aspirations after
a higher life, any longings for reformation, that house
affiliated itself to Clugny ; thus J^eginning to constitute
a Congregation, that is a cluster of religious houses,
scattered it might be overall Christendom, but owning
one rule, acknowledring the superiority of one mother

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MONASTICISM^ 109

house, and receiving its Abbots or Priors from thence.
In the Clugnian Congregation for example there were
about two thousand houses in the middle of the twelfth
century — these mosdy in France ; the Abbot or Arch-
Abbot, as he was called, of Clugny) being a kind of
Pope of Monasticism, and for a long time, the Pope
excepted, quite the most influential Church-ruler in
Christendom. The glory of Monte Cassino, which
had been hitherto considered as the pattern on which
other houses should fashion themselves, was eclipsed
by the greater glory of Clugny ; however it might re-
tain, in the midst of all the novelties of this and of
other younger competitors, a certain stately dignity
of its own.

These religious guilds or corporations fell in with
the temper of the time, and the eleventh century
saw the foundation of several new Orders, as that of
Camaldoli (1018), of Vallombrosa (1038), and more
important than either of these, the Carthusian (1084).
The Rule of this last exceeded in severity that of all
which had gone before, while it hardly left room for
any which should come after to exceed it. The eude-
monism of the present age does not require to be
flattered and fed ; nor do men need, so far as one can
see, to be warned against excessive severities ; yet it
is difficult not to feel that the austerities by this Rule
imposed were to a great extent pursued and prac-
tised, not as a means to an end, but as an end in
themselves, and as- having an intrinsic value of their
own. Neither should we here leave the Carmelites
unnamed, though they belong to a somewhat later
period (1156). These, tracing up their first origins
to Elijah and Elisha, had their chief haunt and home

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no ; MONASTICISM.

in Mount Carmel, until the loss of the Holy Land
compelled them to migrate to Europe. Other smaller
Orders there were, which claimed special works of
mercy as their own : of them, however, hereafter.

But one was founded at the close of the eleventh
century (1098), which should exercise a far stronger
influence on the Church's life than any which we Jiave
named, the Clugnian perhaps only excepted. The
Cistercian, of which I speak, was, as all these new Or-
ders, were, an attempt at reformation, this reforma-
tion consisting in a stricter observance of the Rule of
St Benedict, with, it might be, here and there a draw-
ing tighter of the Rule itself. But the Cistercian, be-
sides this, was an attempt, in part successful, to make
Monasticism more of a quickening element of spirit-
ual life, not merely for those within the walls of the
cloister, but also for the multitudes beyond. In this,
which was a certain anticipation of what was after-
wards more fuHy carried out by the Mendicants, was
the main secret of its success. At first indeed the
new Qrder gave no promise of the magnificent future
which was before it, nursing mother as it was destined
to prove of so many Popes, of Cardinals and Prelates
out of number. Indeed at one time, as the first little
group of enthusiasts who founded the Order died out
one by one, and no other took their places, it seemed
likely that it would expire without having enlisted a
single novice, scaring these away as it did by the ex-
treme severity of its Rule. It was in this precarious
condition when St. Bernard, the scion of a noble Bur-
gundian hoiise, came to the rescue, drawing after him
some thirty young companions whom he had inflamed
with his own love of a life so rigorous and austere.

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MONASTICISM. m

From him the Cistercians are sometimes called Ber-
nardines ; and this name does not more than express
the fact that he was their real, although not their nom-
inal, founder. From Clairvaux, by him made famous
for ever, for some five and twenty years he ruled not
merely the Order which derived its chief lustre from
him, but, it is hardly too much to say, the whole
Church. Counsellor and admonisher of kings, trainer
and maker of Popes, healer of schisms, condemner of
heresies, author of a new Crusade, he was in every
aspect, save indeed that of high speculative theology,
the leading spirit of his age, even as he must be
owned to be the fairest flower which medieval Monas-
ticism can show.

When this later embodiment of the monastic idea
began to compete for men's favour, and to show how
formidable a rival it was likely to prove, the older
Clugnian foundation had already seen two centuries of
existence; and the lapse of time, the* world's admira-
tion, and an immense prosperity which this drew after
it, had begun to tell upon it We do not read of any
scandalous disorders there, though doubtless some
relaxation of the severe discipline of an earlier time
had crept in. Of the lavish offerings of the faithful a
part had been laid out on their own houses, which were
oftentimes of regal grandeur and extent, and on
churches, of which many were vast and magnificent.
To the splendour of these the whole aspect of the
Cistercian buildings was the strongest contrast, and,
whether so intended or not, a silent rebuke. There
were no splendours here, but everywhere an austere
simplicity, a puritan plainness; for costly tapestries
bare walls, for heaven-aspiring roofs low rafters ; for

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1 1 2 MONASTICISM.

immense windows with their gorgeous wealth of stained
glass, narrow openings sufficient to let in the day ; for
silver candelabra iron candlesticks, and of these only
enough to give light: no gorgeous ritual, no elaborate
music. Then too, while others^ the Clugnians above
all, gloried in their exemption from episcopal jurisdic-
tion, a dutiful submission to this was an essential fea-
ture of the younger Order. You will not wonder that
the glory of Clugny paled before a glory which
exceeded, before the stricter discipline and severer
living of Clairvaux.

But the rigour of the Cistercians themselves was in
due time to thaw beneath the sun of the world's
favour. Already in the thirteenth century their fall
had begun. The Inner Mission had been taken out of
their hands by the Mendicants, and they succumbed
to that doom of declension and decay, to which, as it
might appear, all were bound in; for indeed those
Orders, wonderful at their beginnings, and girt up as
to take heaven by storm, seemed destined to travel in
a mournful circle from which there was no escape.
Goethe has somewhere said, " When a man has done a
remarkable thing, the world takes excellent care that
he shall never do another." The words have their ap-
plication to societies as well as to individuals. There
was in these Orders zeal, and labour, and love, and
self-denial at the outset; and these in so high a
measure as to draw upon an Order the world's wonder,
men admiring and by gift or by testament heaping
lands, riches, boons of all sorts upon it. And then
after a while prosperity did its work. The salt lost its
savour, and the first love departed, and a revival in
some novel shape of things ready to die became neces-

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MONASTICISM.

113

sary; which revival' sometimes arrived, but not always,
— ^this also in due time to spend and exhaust itself, as
all before it had done. Fuller, at once witty and wise,
as is his wont, has put it well: "As mercers when their
old stuffs begin to tire in sale, refresh them with new
names to make them more vendible, so when the
Benedictines waxed stale in the world, the same Order
was set forth in a new edition, corrected and amended,
under the names first of Cluniacs — ^these were Bene-
dictines sifted through a finer sieve, with some addi-
tionals invented and imposed upon them. . . . Sec-
ondly, Cistercians, so called from one Robert living in
Cistercium; he the second time refined the drossy
Benedictines."

With whatever jealousy the different Monastic
Orders might regard one another, or might all be
regarded by the parochial or secular clergy, they were
safe never to want the good will and protection of the
Papal See. The Church could not exist without its
Bishops and Pastors, who were by divine appointment
constituent elements of it. Yet it was not upon these
that the Papacy mainly relied, or in whom it looked to
find its chief support. This it found rather in the
Monastic Orders, which were its own creation, its
natural allies, and for which it reserved its choicest
favours and exceptional privileges. This preference
after all was not very wonderful, and had its measure
of justification. There was probably more real work
to be gotten out of the monks than out of the secular
clergy. If a signal emergency arose, they were the
readiest and the fittest to meet it A new Order, al-
lowed and favoured, was often a safety-valve to carry

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1 1 4 MONASTICISM.

off a perilous enthusiasm. That which, left to run its
own course, and embodying itself in the form of a sect,
might have gone far to wreck the Church, did in the
form of an Order rather strengthen and sustain it.
The Monastic Orders have been sometimes likened
to the Schools of the Prophets ; the secular .Clergy, in
their routine of fixed service, to the Levitical priest-
hood The comparison is not altogether a fanciful
one.

I shall fitly close this Lecture with a few words from
two of the most accomplished defenders of the Monas-
tic system in modern times, but two who looked upon
it from somewhat different points of view. Montalem-
bert, the latest of these, in his 'Monks of the West^ re-
pels with no little warmth and with some indignation
the praise which Chateaubriand bestowed on the mon-
asteries, namely that they furnished a refuge and re-
treat for the weary and sick of heart, for those whom
the arrows of the Almighty had pierced, for the disap-
pointed, the misunderstood, for multitudes who, so far
as this world was concerned, could not boast of being
"men who had succeeded,'* but might be regarded
rather as having fought the batde of life and lost it
He refuses to see in these cloisters such hospitals for
the sick as Chateaubriand describes them. They were
rather in his judgment training places for the strong ;
where not what was feeblest, but what was most robust
and most vigorous in the Church's life was to be found,
where the men were formed and fashioned who should
afterwards rule the Church or convert the world.
There is truth in both statements, but doubdess in the
best days of Monachism, and in the best examples of
it, the verdict of Montalembert is nearer to the truth

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MONASTICISM.

115

than the more sentimental verdict of the other. Of
the qualifications with which either conclusion must be
accepted, of the abatements which must be made from
both, I have already said something, and cannot for
this present undertake to say more.

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LECTURE IX.

HILDEBRAND.

So long as Charles the Great lived, it was not likely
that there should be any serious collision between the
spiritual power and the temporal. Few would have
been disposed to provoke a conflict with one so pow-
erful and predominant, so clearly resolved to allow no
encroachment on the domain which he daimed as his
own. He too upon his part recognized the limits
which divide the two domains, and in remarkable con-
trast to the Byzantine Emperors and notwithstanding
his own lively interest in the theological questions of
his time abstained in the main from any undue inter-
ference with them, or, if he did interfere, so carried
the Church with him, that none were disposed to re-
sent the share which he took in her affairs.

But the Empire which Charles had won^i^^needed
another Charles to keep together. His institutions
had done something here, but his personal influence
much more, and to this he left none to succeed.
Through family quarrels and intestine wars, aided by
the mutual jealousies of Teuton and Roman, the
mighty fabric of empire which he had reared fell into
fragments not very long after his death, and all at-
tempts to piece these fragments together in new com-
binations came to nothing. The story is a deplorable
one, but still we may deplore it overmuch. The
"6

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HILDEBRAND. \ 1 7

throes and birth-pangs in which the new nationalities
of Europe were bom were terrible; but if at the cost of
these Europe was saved from a second Byzantine Em-
pire, they were not endured in vain. Nor was it long
before the rudiments of future kingdoms, shaping
themselves out of the general wreck and ruin, began
to appear. For a century indeed or more the Imperial
dignity was not absolutely tied to anyone of these
kingdoms, but shifted from one to another, while
oftentimes there was no Emperor at all, his supremacy
and very name being alike in abeyance. In the end,
however, the German kingdom, or kingdom of the
East Franks, so transcended any other in power, that
in the days of Otto the Great (936-973) it perma-
nendy annexed the Imperial dignity to itself. The
consequences of this, alike for Italy and for Ger-
many, above all for the former, — ^were incalculable.
Throughout all the Middle Ages they stand in rela-
tions to one another the closest, and at the same time
the most unhappy ; able to make one another misera-
ble, but very rarely able to do one another any
good.

The Popes meanwhile have used the partial, or
what was often the total, eclipse of the Imperial power
for the increase of their own ; and there is not want-
ing a brief gleam of glory to light up the Papacy
during the Pontificate of Nicholas I., called, and not
without some right, the Great (858-867). But close
upon this there follows a time of very deep degrada-
tion. All which in the eyes of men is counted the
holiest becomes the spoil of wild and wicked factions
among the Italian nobility For fifty years and more
(904-962) the election to the throne of St Peter lay

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1 1 8 HILDEBRAND.

in the hands of three infamous women, a mother and
her two daughters. Their domination has been often
characterized by a word, which, though it veils its
ugliness in Greek, I shall not care even under this
veil to repeat. The moral outrages which this time
beheld are not to be told, nor shall I attempt to tell
them. Roman Catholic writers make no attempt to
conceal the depth of desecration and dishonour which
the Papacy then passed through ; nay, they seem
rather to take a pleasure in making the worst of this,
arguing that none but a divine institution tould have
sounded those abysses of infamy, and yet emerged
with a glorious future before it If indeed they had
been content to urge from-this recovery the profound
roots which the Papacy must have had in the necessi-
ties of the time, there might be something in argu-
ment ; but more in this survival I fail to see.

Matters in the end had proceeded so far that even
those who were most jealous of Imperial interference
saw in this interference the only remedy for intolerable
present ills, and besought the assistance first of the
Emperor Otto L, — from whom, as "Defender of West-
ern Christendom," they had a right to claim this (963),
— and when the old mischiefs gathered strength anew,
of Henry III. (1046). The help thus sought was hon-
ourably rendered. A series of respectable Popes, all
nominated by the Emperor, brought back some sort of
credit to the chair of St Peter. This help, it is true,
was not very gratefully acknowledged, seeing that the
most immediate use which the Papacy made of re-
covered strength and revived character was to get rid
for ever of the necessity of obtaining the Imperial
allowance of the Papal elections.

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HILDEBRAND.

119

But while these Monarchs did something to reinvest
It with some sort of reputation, it was more from with-
in than from without diat moral strength came to it
again. The man who most effectually wrought for the
lifting of it up to. heights from which it might seem to
have for ever fallen, for the giving to it a new lease of
life, and a world-domination vaster than could have
been dreamt of in the wildest dream (let us judge of
him morally as we may), was unquestionably one of
the few men who have made and moulded the history
of their own and of after ages. Hildebrand — ^we
know him officially as Gregory VII., but it is difficult
not to call him by his proper name — ^was a Benedic-
tine monk^ trained in die famous monastery of
Clugny. Clugny had already become a moral force
in the Church, and one so great, that it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that without a Clugny diere
would scarcely have been a Hildebrand; or, if such
there had been, that, wanting zealous and trained
instruments to work his will, he would have found -
himself for the carrying out of his purposes as help-
less as alone. The name sounds German, but it is not
recognized as such by German scholars; and there is
no reason to doubt that he was an Italian by descent as
well as by birth. Long before his own elevation, from
the Pontificate of Leo IX. (1048), he had been more
and more felt and acknowledged as the ruling spirit
of the reforming party in the Church, had virtu^ly
named Pope after Pope, no less indeed than five; alld
under the shelter of their names had already begun
the conflict, which, now that the time seemed ripe, he
was prepared to wage more boldly than ever in his
own.

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I20 HILDEBRAND.

It was not so mudi new ideas launched by him upon
the world, as the energy with which he embodied old
ones in act, that gave him his great position in history.
All which he uttered had been uttered by others be-
fore him ; but what others promulged and undertook
with a certain timidity, presently stopping short as
men terrified by that which they themselves had done,
he carried out boldly and to the full. For him the
source and spring of all the ills which afflicted, de**
graded, and threatened, unless arrested, to destroy the
Church, lay in its bondage to the secular power.
With its complete emancipation from this the sole
hope for the future was bound up. The Church must
be free ; but for him it was only free when it had ex-
tinguished every other freedom but its own. Hilde-
brand could not so much as conceive a distribution of
power whidi should assign to the Church and State
severally a domain of their own, each sacred, each
divinely traced out For him the one was holy, having
to do with the highests interests of men ; the other
profane ; — Nimrod, the successful hunter of men, being
in his eyes the true author and founder of that organ-
ized violence, the State. Here was a distinct advance
on the views of his illustrious predecessor and name-
sake, Gregory I., who had been content to teach that
the priesthood was of divine ordination, but the king-
dom of human importunity (with reference, no doubt,
to I Sam. yiii. 6, 7) ; the one having been given by
God, and the other extorted from Him. To one so
minded, any other arrangement than that the Church
should rule and the State should serve, must have
presented itself as monstrous.

The first great reform by which he hoped to deliver

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HILDEBRAND. 121

the Church for ever from shameful subservience to any
worldly authority, was the revival and reinforcement
of the laws compelling the celibacy of the secular
Clergy, — ^laws which never since the time of their in-
troduction in the fourth century had been universally
obeyed, and which in his time had fallen, at least
among the lower ranks of the Clergy, into general
neglect. Our own Dunstan indeed, about a century
earlier, himself in a narrower sphere and among a
ruder people a prophetic type and harbinger of Hilde-
brand, had attempted what Hildebrand was attempting
now, but with only temporary success. The hierarchi-
cal system which Gregory had at heart was essentially
anti-national. It could only subsist by the absolute
subordination of the interests of any and every par-
ticular nation to those of the Papal See. A celibate
Clergy might consent to this, might labour for this, but
certainly not a Clergy of which a large proportion were
married. These ceased at once to be a militia in the
heart of ev6ry land, upon whom as sure allies the Pope
could under all circumstances rely. Their country, its
honour, its dignity, its well-being were so much to
them, that in any struggle they were at least as likely
to be found ranged on the side of their native prince
as on that of 'a foreign ecclesiastic.

Other motives, and of these some worthy of Honour,
wrought in the mind of Gregory. Doubdess he saw
the danger, in those days a most real one, of the
Clergy resolving itself into an hereditary caste; air
the higher places in the Church preoccupied and
handed down from father to son, or by other family
arrangement. And with this he beheld a glory and
chief strength for ever departing from it,, namely its

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122

HILDEBRAND.

offer of a free career to all, its placing what it had of
highest and best within the reach of the lowest and
the humblest, if only they showed themselves worthy
of it Himself humbly bom, the son of a carpenter at
Saona, he knew by his own experience what grand
opportunities it gave, and would fain preserve them
for others.

The issues which the battle against the family had,
need not surprise us. The married Clergy, without
organization, with many misgivings about the rightful-
ness of their own position, with the rule of the Church
plainly against them, however the law of God might
be with them, were no match for one who had no mis-
givings about the rightfulness of his position. Yet for
all this it cost him a mighty struggle to carry out his
purpose. The opposers were not overcome till he
had enlisted against them all the blind passion and
coarse manicheeism of the lowest among the people,
hounding on the rabble to insults and outrages of
every kind against the " Nicolaitans ;" for in contests
like these there is nothing like fastening an offensive
nickname upon adversaries, and so this heresy of the
Nicolaitans was invented (with allusion, no doubt, to
Rev. ii. 15), and the married Clergy with their abet-
tors counted guilty of it Of the frightful evils which
sprang from the success which at length attended his
efforts, it does not need to speak more in particular.
Sufficient to say that Hildebrand's iron will and piti-
less resolution triumphed in the end over all opposi-
tion. Milan, strong in her Ambrosian traditions,
attempted resistance, but with no other result than the
loss of ecclesiastical liberties which up to this time, in
the face of Rome herself, she had preserved; and

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HILDEBRAND.

123

from the Pontificate of Gregory VII. dates, not the de-
mand of the Roman Church that all who minister at
her altars should be unmarried, but any approach to
an universal observance of this rule. Henceforth the
Clergy became an exclusive body,- not patterns to the
flock, models on which other Christians should fashion
the lives of themselves and their families, but a sepa-
rate class, lifted above the rest of the faithful, and in
this central fact of their lives divided from them.

No sooner was it plain that from this struggle Gre-
gory would come forth victorious than he followed up
this blow with another. In his determination to put
down the profane trafficking with holy things, and this
not merely in its coarser, but also in its sybder forms,
— to preserve the Church's peculium from being ab-
sorbed into the possessions of rapacious nobles and
kings, for the peril of this was immense, — ^he can only
have our sympathy, and, when we think of all the self-
ish and brutal forces which he challenged to the con-
flict, in a large measure our admiration. But, as we
shall see, he proposed to himself much more than this.
And now there comes to the front that which is known
as the struggle of the Investitures, a struggle which
was not to reach its settlement until nearly half a cen-
tury after his death, and even then a settlement which,
as it turned out, was very far from proving an end of
strife.

There are some conflicts which, so to speak, are due ;
which may arrive alltde sooner or a litde later, the ex-
act moment of their breaking out being determined
by accident, or by the action of some single will ; but
which in themselves are inevitable. This of the In-

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124

HILDEBRAND.

vestitures, which, once begun, shook Western Chris-
tendom so long, in which pen and sword were alike so
busy, was one of these. It will not be very difficult to

.explain to you its nature. In the eleventh century the
whole feudal system as it existed in the later Middle
Ages was rapidly shaping itself, and was so effectually
moulding European society to its own conditions and
requirements that the Church itself could not escape
its control. This system may be described as a com-
plete organization of society through the medium of
land tenure, in which, from the king down to the low-
est landowner, all are bound together by obligations
of service and defence, — ^the lord to protect his vassal,
the vassal to do service to his lord. This system,
which grew out of the conditions of the time, with all
its faults .met the needs of the age; it was probably the
only one which then was possible. But it is manifest
that it could not stand, if one half of the land, — and in
many countries the Church was in possession at least
of this moiety,— had been exempted from the obligation
of those services which were everywhere else the con-
dition of its tenure; or had been so held that the ren-
dering of such services could not be enforced. The se-
cular princes therefore demanded that a Bishop should
not enter upon the enjoyment of the temporalities of
his see, should not indeed be consecrated, until he had
done homage for, and had received from their hands

. the Investiture of those temporalities; engaging himself
hereby to the' fulfilment by himself, or, where this was
not possible, by proxy, of the duties corresponding.

There was a complaint of long standing on the
Church's part against the form in which this. Investi-
ture was made, namely, by the delivery of a crozier

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HILDEBRAND. \ 2 5

and ring. As many as had any claim to be Church-
men at all were justly offended at the employment of
the sacred tokens, symbolizing as these did, not the
temporal rights and emoluments which were all that
the lay patron could confer, but spiritual gifts and rela-
tions; the ring the Bishop's marriage with his Church,
the crozier his commission coming direct from Christ
Himself, to feed the flock committed to his charge.
Whether so intended or not, this manner of Investi-
ture was a practical denial of the spiritual character
of the Church; that it was a kingdom not of this
world, but from above : and they were altogether in
their rights, — Hildebrand the first and foremost of
these, — ^who required that Investiture should take place
in some other way. He felt, and felt truly, that spirit-
ual power must be a divine power, not derived from
any mere man whatsoever; that no king nor kaiser
could be the source from whence it flowed; that either
the priest is nothing or is called of God to his work.

But he and the Churchmen who fought this batde
with him did not stop here. They were resolved to
get rid not of this fashion of homage or Investiture
only, but of the homage itself in any shape what-
soever. All the abuses connected with the obtaining
of Investiture from the lay-patron, simoniacal pay-
ments and the rest, frequent and flagrant as they were,
he was resolved by a single stroke to make for ever
impossible; and, more daring purpose still, by the
same stroke to release the Clergy for ever from any
and all dependence on the secular power. The pro-
perty of the Church, now the desecrated spoil and
merchandise of princes, he would reduce within his
own dominion. Hildebi:and was not the man to assert

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126 HILDEBRAND.

a claim like this without seeking to put it through;
and in a Council at Rome (1075) he deposed every
Bishop or other spiritual person who had received In-
vestiture from lay hands, putting them under an
excommunication, till they should have renounced that
accursed thing which by these wicked means they
had gotten. The same excommunication he laid on
Emperor, Prince, Potentate, whosoever he might be,
that presumed to demand this homage, or to confer
on any by Investiture the temporalities which belonged
to his See, Abbey, or other benefice.

With claims like these, which, if admitted, would in
fact have released from every obligation to the State
the holders of half or more of the land therein, it could
not be long before the two powers thus placed in op-
position proceeded to measure their strength against
one another. What arrangement was reached at
length I may as well now relate, though in fact it was
not till nearly "fifty years after Gregory's death that
the end arrived. The first Crusade, which followed
hard upon that death (1097), drew men's thoughts
away from the subject for a while. Before long, how-
ever, it occupied them anew ; and various ineffectual
efforts were made by means of some compromise to
dose the quarrel — Pope Paschal II. in the year mi
going so far as to consent that the Clergy should
renounce all possessions held by them on the tenure
of homage. This arrangement would certainly have
brought the quarrel to an end, seeing that then there
would have been nothing wherewith to invest; but
the German Prelates, not very unreasonably, refused
to accept a settlement, which would have stripped
their sees of their entire endowments ; and they com-

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HILDEBRAND.

127

pelled Paschal to go back from this undertaking.
After inkshed in abundance and bloodshed not a
little, a compromise was arrived at, which has since ac*
quired the name of the Concordat of Worms (11 22).
Both of the contending parties gave up something,
but one much more than tiie other ; the Church shad-
ows, the State substance. The more important elec-
tions should be henceforth made in the presence of
the Emperor, he engaging not to interfere with them,
but to leave to the Chapter or other electing body the
free exercise of their choice. This was in fact to give
over in most instances the election to the Pope, who
gradually managed to exclude the Emperor from all
share in Episcopal appointments. The temporalities
of the See or Abbeynvere still to be made over to the
Bishop or Abbot elect, not, however, any longer by
the delivering to him of the ring and crozier, but by a
touch of the sceptre, he having done homage for
them, and taken the oath of obedience. All this was
in Germany to find place before consecration, being
the same arrangement that seven years earlier had
brought the conflict between Anselm and our Henry I.
to an end ; in Italy and in the kingdom of Aries within
six months after the same. Crozier and ring should
rstill be delivered, but not by any secular hand, even
,as it was not any longer by these emblems that the
temporalities were conferred.

But we have put ourselves in advance of the times
of Hildebrand, to which we return. It was not long
before the Papal pretensions brought him and the
young German King, Henry IV., into mortal conflict
It must be freely owned that if, in this first hostile
clash of arms between the kingdom and the priest-

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128 HILDEBRAND.

hood, the Church was magnificently represented, such
was far from being the case with the State. Henry
IV., left an orphan at six years old, in childhood and
youth submitted of a purpose to the most corrupting in-
fluences, having already alienated by tyrannous courses
and driven into rebellion those on whose loyalty his
throne should most have rested, displayed in the ear-
lier stages of the quarrel none of those higher and
nobler qualities which adversity revealed, if it did not
create, in him ; and assuredly was ill to cope with the
great and politic Pontiff, who had so dextrously se-
lected not Philip of France, still less William of Nor-
mandy, but in their stead this dissolute boy for his an-
tagonist; while yet, if he could humble him, the highest
in worldly dignity of the Princes of the earth, he might
be regarded as in some sort having humbled all.

Little by litde the relations between the two became
more and more strained : the Pope complaining of the
King that he nominated Bishops hostile to the Roman
See, that he retained among his confidential advisers
excommunicated persons, that his rule was an intoler-
able tyranny, and his- own life a shameful outrage on
all decency ; and in the end citing him to make answer
for himself in person to these charges. We have a
glimpse here of the wonderful reversal which two or
three centuries had brought about in the relations of
Pope and Emperor that such a citation should havie
been possible. Henry understands what it means;
that the Pope is claiming the right to depose him ; that
in all likelihood he will exercise this right. He snatches
at whatever weapons of defence are at hand. Hastily
calling together a Diet, he hurls countercharges against
the Pope, sorcerer, simonist, fautor of heretics, — this

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HILDEBRAND.

129

no doubt with reference to Berengar, — ^with whatever
other accusations a blind rage can suggest ; and will
prevent his own deposition by a declaration of the
Pope's. And now the Church's thunders do not sleep.
Henry is pronounced under ban ; to have forfeited his
kingdom. This ban of the Church had not yet lost its
terrors. Henry's adherents fall from him. He him-
self, as " a man forbid," loses heart and courage, makes
abject submission (the well-known scene at Canossa) ;
but, once restored to the Church's communion, repents
his repentance, takes up arms again, and displaying
energy and conduct for which none had given him
credit, wins back the larger part of Germany by arms.
An anti-Caesar, raised up by Gregory, — such in these
ages are almost as plentiful as antipopes, — perishes in
batde ; Henry carries the war over the Alps, and,
various causes helping, compels the Pope to abandon
Rome, and to seek the protection of the Normans.
Norman adventurers, as I shall have occasion again to
observe, had recently founded a kingdom in South Italy,
which on this occasion and on others proved an oppor-
tune refuge to Popes in the days of their adversity.
Here, at Salerno, Hildebrand dies (1085), ^^ ^^ile and
defeat ; to all appearance the vanquished champion of
a lost cause ; but indeed, as the issue proves, not the
conquered but the conqueror in that mighty duel which
was now fairly begun, that tragedy in several acts,
played now on Italian, now on German soil, and now
on both, whereof this was the opening act.

But I have followed up to its close this struggle with
Henry, which was indeed the main affair of Gregory's
life, to the neglect of some other aspects of it which
must not be altogether omitted. His resdess activity,

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130

HILDEBRAND.

his high flying claims, brought him into collision with
other of the kings of the earth. It was under a ban-
ner consecrated by a papal benediction that William
of Normandy went forth to win the crown of England;
and Gregory demanded homage from him for the
kingdom which this benediction had enabled him to
win. But when William refused, saying bluntly that
he had promised nothing of the kind, that his pre-
decessors had never yielded this homage to the Pope's
predecessors, and that neither would he to him, Grre-
gory let the matter drop. The same caution he dis-
played in the matters of Philip I. of France. Indeed,
none was more wary than he was to know how far he
might venture and with whom ; and to let fall, for the
time at least, claims which were likely to be seriously
resisted. It is a characteristic of the man which the
least favourably impresses us. One would gladly
have seen in him a litde less of cunning, and a litde
more of uncalculating fanaticism.

Lines and colours of the darkest have been freely
employed in drawing the portrait of this Pope, not
Hildebrand, but " Brand of Hell,'* as our homily has
called him; " HoUenbrand," as not seldom the Ger-
man Reformers. This is not very wonderful. With
no misgiving but that his cause was the cause of God,
he trampled without pity or remorse on human hearts
and their strongest affections. . Overthrowing one
tyranny, but, unable to conceive of a free Church ex-
cept under the conditions of a servile State, he reared
high another, and a more intolerable in its room.
Eminent statesman as he was, he yet was one in whom
the serpentine craft left litde or no place for the co-
lumbine simplicity. Peter Damiani, the man of his

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HILDEBRAND. 131

right hand, who knew him in his heights and in his
depths, fondly calls him his Sanctus Satanas, his " St.
Satan," or shall we render it, his " holy Devil ? " and
if this was more than half in jest, yet as we know,
many a true word has been uttered in jest

But we owe justice to all : and who can refrain from
admiring the mighty energy of will which enabled him,
against such oppositions, to bring the Church upon
new lines, lines upon which for centuries it ran ? "His
conversation" (in all ages a rare grace among Church-
men), was " without covetousness." Then, too, if
stem to others, he was first stern to himself. Far off
from him and from his Court, as it is almost needless
to say, were those shameful disorders which had so
disgraced the Court of some who went before him,
and should disgrace the Court of others who came
after. He took his place and his work in earnest. To
be highest in dignity meant for him to be foremost in
toil and first in danger. And when upon his deathbed
he exclaimed, "I have loved righteousness and hated in-
iquity, and therefore I die in exile," let there have been
what of self-righteousness there may in such an appro-
priation of words which only One had a right to make
unreservedly his own, they were the utterance of his
deepest conviction ; and if this absolute identifying of
his cause with the cause of God was his sin, it was also
that which left pardonable the sin. Not to us the great
Pontiff, — in my mind the greatest of all, for Innocent
III. in the main did but reap what Hildebrand had
sown, and fill in an outline which he had traced, — not
to man, but to his own Master he must stand or fall.
Whether he was one of the good it is not for us to de-
termine; he was assuredly one of the great of the earth.

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LECTURE X.

THE CRUSADES.

To understand the Crusades aright, we must travel
back and occupy ourselves a litde with the history of
the Holy Land in the centuries preceding. Jerusalem
had fallen at the first burst of the Mahomedan invasion
into the hands of the immediate followers of the Pro-
phet (638) ; but had yielded under conditions which,
so long as they were observed, ensured a tolerable ex-
istence to the Christians who were content to remain
under the Moslem yoke. Nor was the treatment of
pilgrims from the West on the whole intolerable. So
far from this, the Saracens regarded with a certain,
sympathy these devout visitants to spots which they
also counted holy. It had, indeed, once been a ques-
tion with Mahoimet whether he should not select Jeru-
salem as the sacred City, the religious centre of Islam.
This, with other similar baits, he had at one time held
out to the Jews, and only let them fall when he dis-
covered that these were not by them to be won. But
such fairer conditions did not last. Great revolutions
in the East brought the Holy City and the Holy Land
under the dominion of a barbarous Turkish tribe (from
1073), recent converts to the Mahomedan faith, but
converts of the old fanatical stamp — at the same time
changing the position of Christian residents and
Christian pilgrims very much for the worse. These

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TJffE CRUSADES. 133

last, who were also much more numerous in the tenth
and eleventh centuries than before, the zeal for pil-
grimages having by this time much increased, brought
back the most lamentable accounts of the treatment of
their brethren in Palestine ; of the outrage and scorn
with which all places which Christians counted the holi-
est were treated ; and, it would often be, of wrongs
and insults which they themselves or their fellow pil-
grims had endured. Men had listened to these stories
long, and with an ever-increasing irritation ; but as
Western Christendom became more conscious of its
strength, slowly there rose up in men's hearts the
thought of winning back the land which the Redeemer
in the days of his flesh had trod, the grave wherein He
had lain, — for while all was holy there, this his Sepul-
chre was the holiest of all ; and at the same time of
avenging all this wrong, and securing for themselves
and for all their brethren access free and undisturbed
to the sacred places for evermore.

Long before the Cfusades came actually to the
birth, such a thought had been stirring in the hearts
of many. Pope Sylvester II. (999-1002) had suggest-
ed a Crus^tde ; but the time was not yet, should not be
for nearly a hundred years. The great purpose came
much more nearly to the birth in the time of Gregory
VII., to whose heart such an expedition lay very near
(1074) ; but what between quarrels with the Emperor,
quarrels with the citizens of Rome, struggles with an
antipope, he had made only too much of work for him-
self at home ; and it was not tHl Urban II. was Pope,
not, that is, till very near the close of the eleventh
century, that Europe was actually afoot.

Where there was so much inflammable stuff as in

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134

THE CRUSADES.

Latin Christendom had been accumulating for years,
a litde spark was sufficient to kindle all into a blaze.
Peter the Hermit did not show himself a very capable
leader of a crusading host, nor, when it came to
blows, in any way a hero, but the furnishing of this
spark is usually ascribed to him. Himself an eye-
witness of the wrongs which the Christians in the
East endured from the brutal and fanatic Turks, en-
trusted with letters from the Patriarch of Jerusalem
beseeching assistance from the faithful in the West,
he passed, with the Papal sanction, from land to land,
telling" everywhere what things he had seen, perhaps
had suffered ; and, gifted as he was with a rude but
popular eloquence, stirred the Western world to its
depths. Such is in the main the generally accepted
version of the part which in the rousing of Christen-
dom he played. And certainly Peter and his ass have
so established themselves as recognized stage proper-
ties at this point of the wondrous story, that one
accepts unwillingly the results of later enquiries which,
stripping him of his legendary fame, leave him an
obscure fanatic with no influence whatever in the first
wakening up of the West ; although, when this once
was accomplished, there were not wanting in him gifts
which enabled him to allure a huge unhappy multitude
to their ruin.

The leaders of the age did not seek to repress the
enthusiasm, but rather did all which in them lay to fan
it to an ever stronger flame; most of all the Pope,
who could not fail to perceive the immense increase
of influence which from such an enterprise must
accrue to him, the moral consecration of his power
which he must derive from placing himself at its head,

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THE CRUSADES.

135

even as this headship would necessarily devolve on
him. He saw that, as men in that day were minded, a
devoted soldier of Christ meant also a devoted soldier
of the Church, and this a devoted soldier of the
Pope. Urban himself made early proof of the gains
which were to be gotten from this movement ; owing
as he did his triumph over an antipope, Clement III.,
to it and to the leadership of the first Crusade which
at once he assumed.

What motives wrought with others, — superstition,
love of romantic adventure, sense of wounded Chris-
tian honour, — I shall seek presently to set before you.
Let it suffice for the present to say that when, at a
solemn Council at Clermont in Auvergne (1095), the
Pope, in an impassioned discourse still preserved to us,
set himself at the head of the Crusade, promised abso-
lution from all their sins to as many as in a state of
true penitence died while engaged in this holy war-
fare, there burst from the enormous assembly an uni-
versal cry, " God wills it ! " " God wills it ! " No time
was given for colder calculation. All who offered
themselves for the work attached at his bidding a
cross to their left shoulder, sewn upon their garments,
in token that they, were Christ's soldiers, and prepared
after a medieval and chivalrous fashion to fulfil his
command, " If any man will be my disciple, let him
take up his cross and follow Me."

And now the enthusiasm to take a part in this
armed pilgrimage, to have a share in the delivering of
the Holy Land from the yoke of the infidel, knew no
bounds. Germany, it is true, was slow to kindle,
though it kindled at last. England had not yet reco-
vered the shock of the Norman Conquest, nor indeed

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136 THE CRUSADES.

in any case would William Rufus have found a Cnisade
much in his line. Spain had already on a smaller scale
a Crusade of its own, which had lasted centuries, and
was to last centuries more. It was thus inevitable
that France should take the lead ; indeed, this would
any how have probably been hers, incomparably rich
as at this time she was in saints, in warriors, in poets,
in scholars, — foremost not in one movement only, but
in all which were now beginning to stir as with a
nobler life the heart of Christendom. It would have
been impossible to repress, none tried to repress, the
excitement Fathers, mothers saw with joy the depart-
ure of their only sons on this perilous but glorious
mission ; wives the departure of husbands whom they
loved the best. Monks and other recluses, some with
the leave of their superiors, some without it, forsook
their cloistral retreats; women too, concealing their
sex, were found in the ranks of the Crusaders. Few
wished to stay behind, and fewer dared. Here and
there, where some knight who in the general opinion
might have gone had tarried at home, the ladies of the
neighbourhood would send him the unwelcome present
of a distaff, as the only implement which he was
worthy to wield. So many pledged and pawned their
worldly possessions to raise funds for. their equip-
ment, that the price of land fell immensely in the
market ; while that of a horse, or of armour, or of
ought which would serve a warrior's need, underwent
a corresponding rise. Whole regions appeared to be
depopulated, so vast a proportion of their inhabitants
had been drawn into the ranks of the crusading hosts.
But the moral aspects of this marvellous agitation
^were the worthiest of regard There will be dark

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THE CRUSADES.

colours enough in any truthful picture of the Crusades
. — ^but to look first on the brighter side. Not a few
who before had been bitterest foes now embraced and
were reconciled, and as brothers in arms set forward
for Palestine together. Many who had hitherto been
plunged the deepest in worldly lusts, — men violent,
impure, profane, sacrilegious, with hands steeped in
blood, — seemed suddenly to be awakened to a nobler
life, to leave their former selves behind them, and, set-
ting forward to the earthly Jerusalem, to have become
pilgrims also to that Heavenly whose towers and pin-
nacles shone as it were through and behind those of
the earthly City. This was eminendy the case, St.
Bernard tells us, with the Knights Templars, a valiant
Order of soldier-monks, founded for the defence of the
Holy Sepulchre ; and in the main recruited from men
such as these ; so that, as Bernard with perhaps a faint
touch of irony observes, the world was not less bene-
fited in losing than the Church in gaining them. Let
me note by the way that he is sometimes spoken of as
their founder, which is a mistake ; but certainly with-
out his enthusiastic allowance of them and the conse-
cration — for the word is hardly too strong — which this
approbation gave them, they would never have grown
to wliat they did. Their rule too, which was that of
St. Benedict, but this adapted to the* new conditions
of a military Order, they owed to him.

A mighty tempest of elevating, purifying emotions
swept over Christendom. It is not easy for those who
have never known, to understand what it must be for
an age receptive of noble impressions to have a pur-
pose and aim set before it, which claim all its energies,
meet all its peculiar conditions; while at the same

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138 THE CRUSADES.

time, lifting it above thfe commonplace and the mean,
they are far loftier than any which men's minds have
hitherto entertained. Such a purpose and aim were the
Crusades during well-nigh two centuries for Europe ;
and the answer which Christian Europe made to the
appeal is a signal testimony of the preparedness of
the Middle Ages for noble thoughts and noble deeds.
I need hardly say that in presenting the Crusades to
you under this aspect, I would not, as I have hinted
already, lead you to suppose that all was thus elevated
and grand about them. Every page in their history,
not to say the final issue which they found, and which
must be taken as the divine judgment about them,
would bear witness against me. The false was mingled
in large proportion with the true, the dross with the
fine gold. All did not set forth to Palestine, no, nor
yet nearly all, single-minded warriors of the Cross.
Some, on the contrary, drawn along with the crowd,
and unwilling to stay behind when so many went;
some out of a mere love of adventure, and weary of
inaction at home; some hoping to find that wealth
and position in the East which were denied them in
their own land, — to carve out a domain, or it might be
a kingdom, for themselves with the sword; others,
again, that they might escape their debts and leave
their creditors behind them, — for so long as they were
engaged in this holy war none might disquiet them in
person or property, nor did the interest of debts ac-
cumulate ; others that they might relieve themselves
from heavy penances which they had incurred, the
Church accepting the Crusader's vow as a discharge
in full of whatever censures a man might have come
under. All these and many other such motives helped

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THE CRUSADES.

139

to swell the crusading armies. The atrocities of which
too many among them were guilty, — the massacre of
Jews on the way to Palestine being accounted by many
nearly or quite as laudable a work as the slaying of
infidels in Palestine; the dissolution of morals; the
extent to which multitudes succumbed to the tempta-
tions of the East ; all this made it only too plain that
the fire which in many bosoms had been kindled, was
not fire from heaven ; that in any true sense Christ's
soldiers and servants they were not, since, whatever
victories over the infidel they might win, they had
not won the victory over themselves.

I must pass over with only the briefest notice the
mighty acts which on both sides were wrought, and
mightier the world has never beheld — ^the batdes, the
sieges, the prosperous and adverse fortunes, the fright-
ful calamities inflicted, the frightful calamities endured;
which do not properly form part of a Church history
at all. It will be enough to remind you that this pre-
cipitation of Europe upon Asia, beginning in 1097,
lasted on for the larger part of two centuries, during
which time Jerusalem was twice won and twice lost
again ; thaf, not to speak of the stream of pilgrims,
armed and unarmed, which was continually setting
eastward, there were during this period seven great
expeditions, — expeditions in which, not to speak of
kings and princes of a second rank, three Emperors
took a personal share, — which are styled the seven
Crusades ; though it is not difficult to count them, as
some have done, at fewer or at more. As a litde help
to memory, I will attach to each of these one or more
of the most notable persons or most signal features
connected with it

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I40

THE CRUSADES.

Of the first you have heard something already. It
was the Knights' Crusade, no Emperor or King
gracing it with his presence ; but Tasso sung it. It is-
sued in the taking of Jerusalem (1099), and the
founding of a Latin kingdom, on the pattern of the
feudal kingdom*s of Western Europe, under Godfrey
of Bouillon ; although he, noblest and worthiest of
this first band of Christian warriors, refused to be
styled King, or to wear a golden crown, in that city
where his Lord had worn one of thorns. But that
Latin kingdom, though constandy recruited by new
accessions from the West, though sustained by the
knighdy valour of the two military Orders, the Knights
of St John and the Knights Templars, in whose mem-
bers the character of soldier and of monk was so
strangely blended, utterly refused to take root ; and
in less than fifty years another Crusade became ne-
cessary (1147) for the propping up of an artificial edi-
fice, which, undermined by vices, jealousies, quarrels
from within, and hard-pressed .by the gathering forces
of Islam from without, was already tottering to its fall.
Edessa, one of the minor principalities which the Cru-
saders had reared, and the main oudying bulwark of
the kingdom, had already fallen (1144). Of the
second Crusade St Bernard stands out as the princi-
pal figure, even as he was its animating spirit It was
he who, leaving his beloved retreat at Clairvaux, and
passing through Germany and Switzerland and the
Netherlands, everjnvhere roused by eloquence of
speech and letter the chivalry of the West, that they
should hasten to the aid of their brethren; persuaded
Conrad III., the first of the Hohenstaufen line, not to
fiall short of so grand an occasion; invoked a divine

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THE CRUSADES.

141

benediction on their arms, and promised them a suc-
cess which never came ; for, as the event too plainly
proved, the gift of prophecy was not among the many
wonderful gifts which were his. This Crusade, thanks
in part to Greek treachery, in part to miserable dissen-
sions among the Crusaders themselves, proved a dis-
astrous failure. Its leaders, a French king and the
German Emperor, return home having effected
nothing, and bringing back with them hardly a wreck
of the magnificent armies which they had led to defeat
and dishonour (1147-1149).

If the dreaded catastrophe which this Crusade should
have averted did not arrive at once, it was only de-
layed for a season by the dissensions of the Mahome-
dans among themselves. When indeed the tidings
came at last that the Holy Sepulchre was again in the
hands of the infidel (1187), a cry of anguish went up
from all Western Christendom ; quarrels at home
were made up for a while, and the armed knighthood
of Europe girt itself for one mighty effort more, which,
as it was fondly hoped, should be the last thfit was
needed. And now two Crusades, the third and the
fourth, — for it is best to count them as two, — were
both on foot at the same time ; one mainly German^
the other English and French. Great names, and
.names more or less familiar to us all, are connected
with both. Frederick Barbarossa, indeed, the grand
Hohenstaufen, is less familiar to some of us than he
should be, and we do but faintly estimate the loss
which his death, drowned as he was in crossing a little
river in Asia Minor (July, 11 90), entailed on the cru-
sading hosts,; but Philip Augustus (i 180-1223) and
Richard Coeur-de-Lion (1189-1199) on one side, and

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142

THE CRUSADES.

the royal-hearted Saladin on the other, are something
more than the mere ghosts and shadows which so often
are all with which the past is peopled for us, if indeed
it be peopled at all ; though for this better acquaint-
ance many among us may thank Sir Walter Scott and
The Talisman rather than any proper studies of our
own. Not the winning back of Jerusalem, but only
some precarious privileges accorded to tlie pilgrims
were all which by these mighty efforts were obtained.

What should have been the fifth Crusade (1204)
and what by some is reckoned as such, — though I
shall not count it a Crusade at all, — did not so much
as attempt the recovery of the Holy City. It issued
in the capture of Constantinople by the Latin armies,
under the plea of restoring a rightful Emperor to his
throne ; and when he was slain, in the setting up of a
shordived Latin Empire in the East False and
treacherous the Greeks, from the Emperor down-
ward, had been from the beginning, embarrassing,
thwarting, and betraying the Crusaders, and for these
ends oftentimes in secret league with the infidel ; yet
this was a shameful diverting to objects of selfish
greed and ambition, — such a diversion as became
only too common at a later day,— of armies gathered
for quite another purpose. -

In the fifth Crusade, which lasted some fourteen
years, there stand out two principal figures; at its
opening Innocent III , who by his earnest appeals did
much to revive the old crusading spirit; at its close the
Emperor Frederick IL, grandson of Barbarossa, and
one of the most enigmatic characters in history, of
whom I shall have to speak more by and bye. A Cru-
sade was indeed a strange enterprise for the Imperial

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THE CRUSADES.

143

free-thinker ; and yet was crowned with so much suc-
cess, that what others had failed to win by utmost
efforts of arms he obtained by negotiation, namely the
cession of Jerusalem with some other towns, as Bethle-
hem and Nazareth, dear to the Christian heart (1229);
which, however, did not remain long in Christian
hands; nor did it fare better with Jerusalem, which,
falling once more into the hands of the infidel, has
never been wrested from them again.

The passion which animated Western Europe was
now very nearly spent ; nay more, there were voices
of earnest remonstrance lifted up here and there
against such expeditions at all. For all this there
must be two more Crusades, three, if we include
among these the expedition of Richard, Earl of Corn-
wall, King of the Romans'and brother of our Henry
III., (1240), which, however, hardly rose to the dignity
of a Crusade. I count therefore but as two those
which were still to come before the end should arrive;
these two, moreover, the result of one man's high-
hearted devotion to that which he believed to be the
cause of God, rather than to impulses stirring still the
popular mind and heart of Christendom. They were
both exclusively French, and the nobility of France
who followed St. Lewis followed out of loyalty to their
sovereign, rather than out of any lively sympathy of
their own for the work which he had in hand. In the
first of these Lewis lost his liberty (1249) ; in the sec-
ond, undertaken after an interval of more than twenty
years, his life (1270).

This last abortive effort closed the list of the Cru-
sades; and no wonder, for who could hope to succeed,
where the saindy King had so signally and disas-

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144 '^^^ CRUSADES.

trously failed ? It was quite time that they should end.
Whatever work they could do was done; whatever
benefits Europe could derive from them, and these I
believe htd been many, they were already obtained.
A new Crusade might still figure in the Papal pro-
gramme as often as a new Pope came to the throne ;
he might announce, as did Pope Pius II. (i 458-1 464)
that he would himself be the leader of it ; princes, as
our own Henry IV., might assume the Cross, and pro-
fess themselves bound, so soon as more urgent affairs
at home would permit, for the Holy Land ; contribu-
tions might still be demanded from the faithful, and, in-
deed, it was sought to levy a permanent tax upon them,
" Saladin's tithe '* it was called, to meet the expenses
of these coming expeditions; nay, the rudiments of
fleets and armies destined for the East were more
than once gotten together, at Venice, at Genoa, and
elsewhere. But these were faint umbrages and no
more. All these preparations came to nothing. Men
did not mean what they said, or at all events did not
mean it with a whole-heartedness strong enough to
overcome hindrances which, in giving actual body
and shape to their purpose, they were sure to en-
counter.

The crusading passion had fairly worn itself out It
could hardly co-exist with what I will not call the
money-making spirit, for I have no wish to find fault
with it, but the commercial spirit which was beginning
to pervade Europe, and which these very expeditions
had done much to arouse. If the enthusiasm revived
for a moment, when the fall of Constantinople (1453)
revealed to Christendom the nearness and the great-
ness of the danger which threatened it from the Otto-

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THE CRUSADES. 145

man arms, this enthusiasm never embodied itself in
the shape of an eighth Crusade ; and those who tried
to quicken it again were doomed to discover the* truth
of the homely proverb which says that it is no use to
flog a dead horse.

On the first blush of the matter the Crusades present
themselves to us as a lamentable failure; and such
failure in one and in a verf real sense they were.
After all that prodigal expenditure of life and treasure,
after nearly two centuries of toil, during which the
winning back of the Holy Sepulchre had been the
darling project of Christendom, for which no sacrifice
had been counted too cosdy, "the world's debate" had
ended, but ended leaving all as it was at the begin-
ning. The miscreants — for we owe that word to the
Crusades, and it meant at first no more than mis-
believers — still kept the spot where the Lord of Glory
had lain. The Christians of the East still ^groaned
under the yoke of their Mahomedan oppressors. ITie
pilgrims from the West were as much exposed to in-
sults and outrages as ever. The petty Latin states
which still survived in the East dragged out for a while
a feeble existence only through the jealousies and dis-
cords of the Moslem enemy; till with the fall of Acre
(1291) the last fragment and wreck disappeared of
structures so dearly and painfully reared, to which
generation after generation had so lavishly contributed
their prayers and toils, their tears and blood.

And yet this is not the whole story. The balance
sheet of history does not offer all this loss upon one
side, and zero in the way of gains upon the odier. Of
some gains which Christian Europe made I have
spoken already. Let me before we leave this theme

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146 ^ THE CRUSADES.

speak also of some other. Assuredly if Europe found
not what it sought, it found much which it had not
sought I will not dwell here on the new roads which
commerce discovered for itself, the manifold arts and
inventions which were brought back from the East;
nor yet on the rise of a middle class through the im-
poverishing of the nobles in these costly expeditions.
These were secondary, but at the same time important,
benefits which grew out of the Crusades. But other
benefits were more important still. Europe, emerging
from the anarchies of the earlier Middle Ages, owed
to the Crusades, and to the bringing together of the
nations of the West in one common enterprise, its first
vigorous consciousness of constituting one body, one
Christendom. Inner divisions there might be many in
it ; but as against all external foes henceforth it was
one. Nor may we forget that, if the tide of Mahome-
dan invasion was not rolled back, yet for two most
critical centuries it had been effectually arrested. To
the Byzantine Empire were given three centuries of
existence more than it would have otherwise enjoyed
— a respite not without significance for the whole
Western world. This arrest of the onward progress
of Mahomedan arms might as a political necessity
have been proclaimed for ever, but would have been
proclaimed in vain. No appeal merely to the reason,
but only such an one as this, addressing itself first and
chiefly to the feelings, the passions, the imagination,
the devotion of Christendom, would have profited at
all, or roused the nations to a common resistance.
The struggle with Islam has so long ceased to be a
life-and-death struggle for the moral and spiritual pos-
session of the world that we find it most hard to be-

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THE CRUSADES.

lieve that such it ever should have been ; and yet, let
us for a moment bethink ourselves of what, despite
this check, was the tremendous pressure of Mahome-
dan power upon Western Christendom for centuries
more, up to the Reformation and beyond it, and we
shall own that the Crusades could very ill have been
spared.

And then to them, to the high thoughts which they
kindled in so many hearts, to the religious consecra-
tion which they gave to the bearing of arms, we are
indebted for some of the fairest aspects of chivalry, as
it lives on a potent and elevating tradition to the pre-
sent day. Thus to them we owe the stately courte-
sies of gallant foes, able to understand and to respect
one another, with much else which has lifted up
modern warfare into something better than a mere
mutual butchery, even into a school of honour in
which some of the gendest and noblest of men have
been trained. TAe Happy Warrior of Wordsworth
could never have been written, for such an ideal of
the soldier could never have been conceived, except
for them. What Europe gained by them we may best
measure by considering what it evidently lost by thefr
ceasing. It is not too much to say that with their
ceasing the whole physiognomy of the Middle Ages
changed, their romantic, poetic, ideal aspect in the
main disappeared. To a thirteenth century, with all
which it had of grandeur and beauty, a fourteenth
with its meanness and poverty succeeded.

And lasdy, we may well believe that in contact and
conflict with the Unitarians of the East, the faithful
discerned, as they never had discerned before, what
treasures of wisdom and grace were laid up in the

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■ 148 THE CRUSADES.

-^ : — : : : — r—.

Church's faith ; in her faith who is Unitarian indeed,
but this in a far higher sense,— confessing as she does
a divine Unity, but in that Unity, a Father, a Son, and
a Holy Ghost, the Spirit of both.

We may be content then to leave to Lord Chester-
field and to others like-minded to pass their judgment
on the Crusades, namely that they were " the most
immoral and wicked scheme that was ever contrived
by knaves, and executed by madmen and fools against
humanity; " and we may thank God that at all events
history is now so written, and the past so judged, that
we are not even tempted to such ignoble verdicts as
these.

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LECTURE XL

THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.

Few thoughtful students of Ecclesiastical history, or
indeed of any history, can have failed from time to
time to put this question to themselves, Was it by di-
vine providence, or by divine permission, or, to put it
somewhat lower still, by divine patience, that the do-
minion grew up in the Church which we call the Pa-
pacy? It is a question not easy to answer; being made
the harder from the fact that the lines which divide the
providence from the permission, and the permission
from the patience, can often only with difficulty be
drawn. An analogy has been sometimes suggested
between the coming up and continuance of this
power, and the coming up and continuance of the
kingship in Israel ; that earlier dealing of God with
his people being adduced as helpful and supplying a
key to the understanding of the later. In one aspect,
it has been urged, that setting up of a kingdom in which
God ceased to be the only King was the outcome of
the people's sin ; in another aspect it was made by Him
to fit into his scheme for the moral training and disci-
pline of his Church. It was the outcome of the peo-
ple's sin; for where would have been the need or the
want of a king, if only the people had held fast to the
glorious truth that God was their King, and that there-
fore in all their dangers and necessities the shout of a

149

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1 50 THE PAPA CY AT ITS HEIGHT.

King was among them ? And as sin this request of
theirs was regarded by Him: "They have rejected
Me, that I should not reign over them " (i Sam. viii.
7). Nevertheless, having asked a King, He gave
them the King that they asked, and wove this king-
ship into the grand providential scheme of his grace.
Something corresponding to this, remotely correspond-
ing one cannot help observing, has been traced in the
later story. Where, it has been asked, would have
been the need, or where the desire of a visible repre-
sentative of Christ upon earth, if Christ Himself, the
personal, ever and everjrwhere present, Lord of his
Church, had not for most men receded very far into
the distance ? But this human world-centre, in place
of the divine world-centre, having once been set up,
God bore with it in his infinite patience, was content
to use it, so far as it was capable of being used, for
his Church's good ; not indeed as the everlasting or-
der there, but rather as that provisional arrangement
which, allowed for a time, should be, and was, set aside
so soon as a better order was prepared to occupy its
room.

But leaving this for what it may be worth, and with
no further attempt to look within the veil and to read
what may have been passing there, let us a little con-
sider the main circumstantial causes which, converging,
wrought together for the giving to the Papacy during
the Middle Ages, a pre-eminence and preponderance
so vast and so enduring. — one which still haunts and
sometimes disturbs the world with memories of what
it has been, with forebodings of what it yet may be. It
is of these secondary causes, and these only, that I
propose to treat.

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THE PAPACY A T ITS HEIGHT 1 5 1

First then I will draw your attention to the fact that .
the Church of Rome was the sole Patriarchate of the^
West, towering so far above every other occidental
Church that none of these so much as dreamt of dis- -
puting her rank and precedence. Not indeed that the
Pope in the high days of his power much affected this
tideof Patriarch, shared by him with four others, as
compared with that of Pope, which from the days of
Gregory VII. was absolutely his own, and might not
be given to any other, or taken by him.

But if no Western Bishop could venture to dispute
the pre-eminence of the Bishop of Rome, it was not
less certain that, in any rivalry or competition with
him, the Eastern Patriarchs would discover that they
had to do with a stronger than themselves. Before
the day of their worst trouble came, they had forfeited
much of their prestige by unworthy disputes among
themselves; not to say that presendy three among
them, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, if not
wholly blotted out by the victorious advance of the
Moslem arms, were reduced to merest ghosts of
what they once had been, and henceforth subsisted
only by Mahomedan sufferance. Constantinople alone
remained ; — but this New Rome fighting at an im-
mense disadvantage the battle of " Who should be
greatest?" with the Old. All the reasons which she
could adduce in her favour were purely mundane: — ^as
that she was the Residence, the seat of Empire, the
city of 'the amplest wealth, wherein was treasured up
the best that remained of the arts and learning of the
world, with more of the same kind. All this could
not profit much when it was urged for the other
Rome that she was founded by one Aposde, even by

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152

THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.

him to whom Christ's great promise had been made,
and watered by the blood of two.

Once more, the Bishop of Rome found an immense
advantage in this, namely that his spiritual throne was
not overshadowed by a seculaj- and Imperial throne,
set in immediate nearness to it The Emperors of
the East may have wished to treat him, and from time
to time they may have actually treated, as they con-
stantly treated the Patriarch of Constantinople ; but
distance did much to restrain and limit their interfer-
ence, and in the ninth century it ceased altogether.
Neither did the peril which had thus been escaped in
one shape come back in another. Charles the Great,
genuine Teuton as he was, did not care to make Rome
the centre and capital of his dominions ; while all the
fantastic schemes of Otto III., including this, his dar-
ling project of all, were cut short by his premature
death. German armies might from time to time cross
the Alps, and might succeed, or might not succeed
in imposing the Imperial will on a recalcitrant Pope ;
but attempts of this kind, desultory and intermittent,
were very different from a dwelling evermore under
the baleful shadow of Eastern Csesarism. The occu-
pant of the Papal Chair enjoyed a freedom of self-
development, an escape from the miserable and often
disgraceful intrigues of the Palace, such as was alto-
gether denied to his less fortunate rival in the East,
who was now the partner of these intrigues, and now
the victim, and not seldom both.

The superiority which in this matter the Old Rome
possessed was long ago felt and understood. Thus
Dante describes Constantine as founding the city in
the East which is called by his name, that so " he

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153

might give the Shepherd room." So much indeed is
very clearly expressed in the forged Gift of Constan-
tine itself, and on that no doubt the assertion of Dante
rests. I need hardly say that it is a mistake to as-
cribe this motive to Constantine; but the words
express admirably well the result of the transfer of
the seat of empire from the b^nks of the Tiber to
the shores of the Bosporos. The Latin Shepherd, and
mainly through this transfer, obtained the room which
to his Greek rival was denied.

But there were other superiorities which belonged
to. Rome, and in which she left behind, not merely that
remoter rival, but every other city in the world. It was
much that from her, the ancient mistress of the world,
this claim to an universal empire should proceed. We
feel at once how impossible it would have been for a
Bishop of Ravenna, or Milan, or Aquileia, to make
good a similar pretension, even if it had entered into
his heart to conceive it. But the world had been
drilled and disciplined for so many centuries to the
taking of its commands from the City on the banks of
the Tiber, that there needed other centuries almost as
many before it could unlearn this lesson of a submis-
sion which had well nigh become to it as a second
nature. The new domination of Rome, "that ghost
of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon
the grave thereof," as Hobbes has so strikingly called
it, with only such inevitable changes as the changed
world-order demanded, seemed the natural, almost the
necessary, continuation of the old. Rome might sink
to the rank of a second-rate provincial town, all her
significance might appear to have gone from her — so
more than once it had — ^and yet in mysterious ways

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154 'THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.

this would all come back to her, as to one who could
not abdicate her position though she would.

With all their unlikenesses, with this fundamental
difference between them, that one asserted a dorfiinion
over the bodies, the other over the spirits of men, the
resemblance was wonderful between the earlier and
the later Rome, till it seemed impossible to exorcise
the spirit of statesmanship, which still haunted and
would not quit the City of the Seven Hills. Christian
Rome did not disdain to learn from heathen; to walk
in the lines which that had traced out ; to wax great
by the same methods. From Rome secular she
learned how to mix herself with the affairs of her
neighbours, to play the part of a mediator or umpire,
to take the side of the weak against the strong: —
breaking down, for example, the power of Metropoli-
tans by her support of Bishops in their conflicts with
them, the Bishops, when their natural leaders were
gone, falling an easy prey in their turn. In this and
in other like ways she knew how to obtain a footing
for herself, which, once gotten, was not lost again, to
advance pretensions which, if the time was not ripe for
them, might remain dormant for a while, or, where
this seemed safer, might be withdrawn altogether. If
heathen Rome sent out her proconsuls. Christian
Rome could boast that she too had her legates to
carry her behests through the world, that for her the
prophetic words of the Psalmist were fulfilled, "In-
stead of thy fathers thou shalt have children, whom
thou mayest make princes in all lands."

It is impossible to say of Rome secular how early
the thought arose in her heart, that let her only be true
to herself and she should in due time be the queen of

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155

the world ; yet a dim prophetic instinct may have very
early stirred within her tliat she was thus predestined
to a mighty doom. As litde can we tell how early in
other hearts the idea of the Papacy, of an universal
spiritual kingdom, with the Bishop of Rome as its
priest- king, arose. Certainly it obscurely wrought,
claims being put forth inconsistent with the liberties
of other Churches, at a very early date, — not first
during the Pontificate and in the heart of Leo the
Great (440-461), however much by his abilities and
his virtues he may have done to prepare the way for
results which in his time were still many centuries in
the distance.

Then too there was a claim on the part of the Ro-
man Bishop that his should be regarded as the court
of final appeal, and he the supreme judge and arbiter
before whom all arduous or important causes might
be brought, — this "might" at a later day being
changed into a " must" It was a claim which dated
from a time anterior to that of which we are treating,
and found this much to support it, namely, that at the
Council of Sardica (347) there was by the Council at-
tributed to the Bishop of Rome a power of revision,
so that, if any Bishop was dissatisfied with an ecclesi-
astical senteoce, he might demand of the Roman
, Bishop to institute a new investigation: — I need
hardly observe that the setting up of such a Court of
Cassation was purely an ecclesiastical arrangement, *
and was never supposed at the time to rest on any di-
vine right At the same time it is easy to perceive
how much there was to nurse that claim into ever
greater strength, when once it had obtained partial
acknowledgment and allowance. It was . inevitable

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1 56 THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.

that in instances out of number the party worsted
before some other tribunal would attempt to. mend his
position by a course which might better, but which
could scarcely make it worse; for on one thing an ap-
pellant could securely count, namely that there would
be a certain predisposition to regard him with favour.
Neither, coming for help to Rome, was he likely to be
under very strict self-restraint in the language which
he used. He would declare that he came to that tri-
bunal which was the last refuge of the oppressed ;
that his sole hope was in the justice of the Roman
Pontiff, who, and who only, had authority to redress
the wrong which he had endured. It was not in the na-
ture of things that suppliants such as these should be
repelled. We know that diey were not, but were in
every way encouraged ; that no injury at Rome was
resented more keenly than the putting by any secular
power of hindrances in their way.

Then, exactly when they were needed the most, in
the earlier half, that is, of the ninth century (about
845), the famous Decretals, falsely ascribed to St. Isi-
dore of Seville, made their appearance. Decretals
[LittercB Decretcdes), let me say, were decisions by the
Pope of questions brought before him, which thence-
forth constituted part of the law of the Church.
Such collections, with their falsifications of history
more or less daring, there had been before, and have
been since. But these supplied exactly what was then
wanted. The fatal fault and flaw in the whole Roman .
pretension lay in its unhistoric character ; in the fact
that so much which was now confidently claimed had
not been even heard of in the first three or four cen-
turies. Some have tried in our own time to remedy

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THE PAPA CY AT ITS HEIGHT 1 57

this flaw by aid of the doctrine of development — ^with
what success, each may judge for himself. This inge-
nious scheme had not then been devised, at any rate
not elaborately wrought out But here was all which
was needed. Here were letters of the early Popes,
beginning from Clement ; decrees of early Councils,
all of them bearing out and sustaining to the full the
latest and largest pretensions of Rome. If only these
were authentic, there was no authority, pre-eminence,
jurisdiction challenged by a Pope of the ninth century,
which had not been challenged and allowed in the first
or the second. Now the Popes, I believe, may be ac- \
quitted of any share in the forgery, for forged these
Decretals have long since on all sides been acknow-
ledged to be; when too they appealed to these —
Nicolas I. was the first who did so (858), — they did
this in good faith, being deceived, as all the world was
deceived. I am aware that it has been recently urged
that these Decretals were not originally thrust upon
• the Church with any purpose of setting forward Papal
pretensions ; and ingenious explanations of their pri-
mary intention have not been wanting. But let these
have what truth they may, the Decretals did not the
less effectually do their work ; and, most remarkable
of all, the complete demolition of their authority
failed to shake in the slightest the huge fabric which
had been gradually built up on the assumption of
their authentic character.

But professing to enumerate the chief causes which,
working together, enabled the Church of Rome to
leave so far behind her all the sister Churches of
Christendom, it would be unworthy to pass over some
of a different character from those on which hitherto

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1 58 THE PAPA CY AT ITS HEIGHT.

we have dwelt Assuredly we should not leave out
of account, as having wrought to this end more than
any other of these causes, the succession of states-
men, and these of the very first order, who, often at
the most critical moments, and just when they were
needed the most, occupied the Papal throne. We
may form what judgment we will about them in other
/ respects, but none, I think, can deny this title to Leo
/ I., to Gregory the Great, to Nicolas L, to Gregory
VII., to Alexander III., to Innocent III. ; not to speak
of many others who, if they may not take rank with
these, yet did each contribute his stone to that won-
drous edifice which thus grew from age to age, till it
seemed that its top was to reach even to heaven.

As little should we omit as an element of Roman
power that the Church of Rome had taken the side
which finally triumphed, — in other words, the right
side, in almost all the principal controversies which
had agitated the early Church. It did so notably in •
that with the Arians ; so also, — ^with two memorable
exceptions on the part of Vigilius (540-555) and Ho- •
norius I. (625-638), but these sufficient to defeat the
claim to Infallibility, — in the long and confused strug-
gle with Monophysites and Monothelites, which fol-
lowed the Council of Chalcedon ; until it grew to a
popular conviction that the side which Rome took
was the side which would triumph in the end.
^ Nor were other moral forces wanting here. It
would have been litde to the honour of Christendom,
if it had bowed the neck to a yoke which had not
been something better than simply a yoke of power.
Who can doubt that in ages of such savagery and
violence, times in which all laws of God and man

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THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT 1 59

were so recklessly trampled under foot, it was much,
and it was felt to be much, that there should be one
man in the world, who could, and who sometimes did,
rebuke without fear or favour the strongest and
proudest of the wrongdoers, the men of the earth,
who were fain to persuade themselves that everything
was permitted to them ? Amid all the tyrannies and
oppressions with which the earth was full, how often a
deep cry and an agonizing question must have gone
up from the hearts of men, Is there anywhere in earth
or heaven a father, one with a father's heart ? is there
anywhere a king the sceptre of whose kingdom is a
right sceptre? And here was one claiming to be all this,
a King ruling in righteousness, the immediate image
upon earth of the Universal Father in heaven. And
righteous interferences in the world, such as in their
measure might justify these titles which he claimed,
were not wanting upon his part Thus, on more than
one memorable occasion the sanctity of the marriage
tie was upheld and vindicated by him against the wan-
ton caprice of princes and kings, who would fain have
made the laws of God to bow to the lusts of men.

It is true that this aspect of the Papacy as the re-
dressor of wrongs, the upholder of right, has in our
own day sometimes been pressed much farther than
the actual facts of history would warrant ; and, if we
would at all arrive at a truthful balance sheet, then
over against the interferences on the side of right
must be set others on the side of wrong: the un-
righteous wars which Rome fostered or direcdy
brought about ; the subjects whom she released from
their allegiance, and invited to rebellion against their
lawful lords ; the sons whom she encouraged to wage

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1 60 THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.

unnatural war against their fathers : the princes, as
for instance Charles of Anjou, whom by some huge
bribe she induced to seize what was not hers to give,
nor theirs to take; the Papal mantle of allowance
thrown over hatefuUest deeds of cruelty and wrong,
as for example the judicial murder of the Templars.
Setting these against those, the balance sheet of
history will present results very far different from
such as we are sometimes invited to accept.

The whole notion of Western Christendom in any
age as a complex of States, all recognizing the Ro-
man Pontiff as the umpire of their quarrels, all invit-
ing and all acquiescing in his decisions, and indeed
the whole dream of a golden age, brought by those
wicked Reformers to a violent close, is a fancy picture,
to which actual history presents no corresponding
reality. There never was a golden age for the
Church, and there never will be^ till Christ, her Lord,
shall come ; but every age will be full of scandals and
shames: none were more crowded with such than
those of which we are treating now. Doubtless in
every quarrel it was always well worth the while for
either of the contending parties to have Rome on its
side ; and one or other, and not seldom both, sought
to secure this advantage. Where they did not invite
interposition, and anything was to be gained by inter-
posing, she would push her way unsolicited into the
strife ; and claiming to act as umpire, would throw her
weight often into the right scale, not seldom into the
wrong. That from time to time she effected some-
thing, which no other could have effected, for the
keeping or for the restoring of the peace of Christen-
dom, for the substituting of a higher law between na-

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THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT. i6i

•

tions than the brutal law of the strongest, no one who
knows the facts and deals honesdy with them will
deny ; but all this in a very imperfect, in a very human
way, with faults of temper, of greed of gain, of lu^ of
dominion, and other faults innumerable, which con-
tinually marred the very best which she did.

Let us consider a litde the Papacy as Hildebrand
left it It gives some sort of measure of the rapidity
with which new claims were pushed ever in advance
of old, that the Decretals, so effective in their own
time, were already felt in his to fall quite behind;
very inadequately to express the rights and preroga-
tives of him who inherited the throne and the author-
ity of St Peter, so that new historical supports had
need to be found to sustain the new pretensions ; the
same thing happening again when in turn Innocent
III. had filled in much which Gregory had left only in
oudine. In the finding of these historical supports
there was indeed no sort of difficulty. What was
wanting was always forthcoming, or if not forthcom-
ing, there were always the Canonists ready with new
law, or with new interpretations of old, whereby any-
thing and everything could be justified. It is true
that in one sense the Papacy of Hildebrand was hardly
capable of any further development. It was scarcely
possible to advance loftier claims than he had ad-
vanced. But much had yet to be made good ; much
had been sketched by him, but waited to be filled in
by some other hand ; much existed in theory, but had
not yet been embodied in practice. Herein lies the dif-
ference between his position and that of Innocent III.
But so far as claims could go, all was already his own.
The Pope who at first had been content as Vicar of

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l62 THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.

St Peter to be recognized as the foremost in rank
and dignity among the. Bishops of the Church, de-
manded now as Vicar of Christ to be acknowledged
as hi some sort its only Bishop ; making no scruple
to name himself Universal Bishop, a title which Gre-
gory the Great had repudiated as inconsistent with
the rights of the other members of the Episcopate.
Not to the collective Episcopate, as was now declared,
but to him alone had the government of the Church,
with the authority to bind and loose, been confided ;
for to Peter alone had it been said, " Feed my sheep,"
"Feed my lambs." All other Episcopal authority
was but an emanation of his. He might invite others
to a participation of the toil, but the plenitude of the
power remained still with himself.

That the Pope only could canonize — this, which was
claimed first by Alexander III. as his exclusive right,
and is sometimes charged against him as a usurpation
— as matters stood, was reasonable enough. If there
was to be such a spiritual peerage, and the idea is a
very grand one, the creation of it could scarcely be
in any other hands save his. But the Pope alone
could call Councils; and even a General Council,
when called, could do no more than advise. He could
dispense with every law of the Church which was not
divine. Somewhat later there were not wanting those
who in their frantic sycophancy affirmed that his word,
who was as a second God upon earth {quasi alter
Deus), could make right out of wrong, justice out of
injustice ; that he could dispense with every law ; that
any concordats or other agreements into which he
was pleased to enter were binding on the other party,
but were not binding upon him.

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THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT. 163

It was only at a later day that, as against this theory
of the Pope as the sole depositary of spiritual power,
another theory was advanced, whereof the famous
iParisian Doctors, of whom by and bye, were the main
upholders. According to this, so far from one man
absorbing all Church authority in himself, and merely
dividing off to others such portions of this as he
pleased, the parochial Clergy were the lineal success-
ors of the Seventy, the Bishops of the Aposdes, and
the Pope of St Peter, Prince of the Aposdes; all
those others having as direct a commission from
Christ as he had, and having indeed received a power,
as it was pointedly described, under the Pope {sub
PapA), but by no mtBXisJrom the Pope {a PapA). I
shall have to tell you before long what litde perma-
nent effect these Doctors were able to give to this or
any other theory of theirs.

It is generally allowed that the medieval Papacy at-
tained its highest pitch of splendour in the time and
in the person of Innocent III. ; that he approached
nearer to the realizing of that idea after which it was
striving than any who went before him, than any who
followed after. True to my scheme of bringing a few
of the prominent persons in Church history before
you, rather than seeking to fill the scene with many
who are not prominent, and who only serve to obscure
those that are, I will dwell a litde upon him and his
Pontjficate ; which done, I shall bring this Lecture to
a close.

Cardinal Lothair, of a noble Roman family, was
only thirty-seven when, in view of the struggle with
the Hohenstaufen Emperors, which was only half
fought out and sooner or later must revive again, he

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1 64 THE PAPA CYA T ITS HEIGHT.

was called by the unanimous voice of the Conclave to
the post of highest dignity and authority in the Church
(i 198). Let me here observe how important a step it
had been when the election of a Pope was taken out
of the hands of the Roman Clergy, magistrates, and
people, in whom at one time it had resided, and was
transferred to the College of Cardinals. This signifi-
cant change was effected in 1059 by Nicolas II., acting
ijnder the influence of Hildebrand, Pope already in all
but name. It is very easy to see how much in unity
of aim the Papacy must have gained, delivered as it
thus was from gusts of popular passion and caprice,
and able to continue and carry through a policy which
had once been determined; and, if it incurred new and
untried dangers through this close election, how many
old dangers, of which it had abundant experience, it
thus left behind it. On the present occasion there
was hereby brought to the front the ablest men whom
the Church possessed.

There is much to provoke a comparison between
him and Hildebrand, who alone among all the Popes
is comparable with him, — points of likeness as of dif-
ference. Innocent was quite as strongly the hierarch
as Gregory had been; he advanced claims quite as
extravagant He could say, "The Lord bequeathed
to Peter not merely the government of the Universal
Church, but the whole secular estate," and the other
could not have said more. And on the faith of this
he acted. Thus there was hardly a monarch in Eu-
rope whom he did not make in one way or another to
feel his hand, " binding their kings with chains and
their nobles with links of iron ;" measuring himself not
with petty kings alone, of Portugal, of Leon, or of

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THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT. 165

Aragon, but with the mightiest potentates on earth.
Philip Augustus of France after a fierce resistance was
by him compelled to take back the wife whom on some
frivolous pretext he had put away; and we are all
more or less familiar with the shameful story of our
own King John, how he was brought to acknowledge
himself " the Pope's man," resigning to him his crown
and sceptre, and receiving these back from him to
hold, he and his successors, as the Pope's vassals
henceforward (1207-12 13). Of Innocent's share in
the struggle with the Hohenstaufen Emperors I speak
elsewhere.

But in him the hierarch did not swallow up the
Chief Pastor. Innocent was diligent in preaching.
"The just shall live by faith" was the text of his ser-
mon at his own consecration. It may be monkish
piety which his ascetic writings breathe, but piety it is.
He had, I am persuaded, the removal of the monstrous
scandals in the Church which drove so many into
wildest opposition to her, quite as much at heart as
any among these ; although his position made it many
times more difficult for him than for others to discern
the true character of the evils which demanded a
remedy. His letters do not deal merely with ques-
tions affecting the honour, glory, and worldly pros-
perity of the Church, but not seldom with the redress-
ing the wrongs of the humblest ; and attest that, if he
regarded himself as the Judge of all the earth, he ac-
cepted also the toil and responsibilities implied in this
name, the terribleness as well as the grandeur of such
a pre-eminence.

Pope Innocent's was in outward aspects a splendid
Pontificate. No antipope, challenging his right to the

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I66 THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT

tiara, entangled him in miserable disputes where suc-
cess was almost as ignominious as defeat If once at
the beginning of his reign he found it convenient to
withdraw from Rome, yet no popular tumult chased
him, as it chased so many before and after, from an
insurgent city. Magnificent above all was the close
of that Pontificate, when at the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215), the 'so-called Twelfth CEcumenic, the repre-
sentatives of two Emperors, all the Eastern Patriarchs
in person or by proxy (for it was the time of the brief
Latin kingdom), seventy Primates or Metropolitans,
more than four hundred Bishops, and eight hundred
other Prelates, all acknowledging him as their head,
took counsel with him for the interests of Christendom,
or, to speak more accurately, received the law from
his lips.

Some dim presentiment that this gorgeous pageant
was about soon to dissolve, that the end was very near,
may have moved him to appropriate, in his opening
address to the Council, words of an infinite solemnity,
and such as it required not a little boldness even for
him to make his own : " With desire I have desired to
eat this Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke xxii.
16). And the end was near, even at the door. A
few months had not elapsed, and all the mighty pro-
jects, the new Crusade, a reformation in the morals
alike of the Clergy and of the laity, the extirpation of
heresy, must either fall to the ground, or be accom-
plished by other hands than his. Innocent died in his
fifty-fifth year (12 16), but not before he had reaped to
the full that harvest of greatness which Nicolas I.,
Gregory VII., Alexander III., with many more, had so
patienriy and so boldly sown.

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THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT. 167

And yet, let me say in parting from him, that, if
time would permit, it might be well worth while, over
against all which he accomplished, to set all which he
failed to accomplish; or which it would have been
much better if he had failed to accomplish ; or which,
so soon as ever he was withdrawn, reverted at once to
its former tracks : even as failure in carrying out an
idea such as his was inevitable ; seeing that to realize
this nothing less than omnipotence, and this wielded
by omniscience, was required. In the absence of these
it remains " the grandest and most magnificent failure
in human history.'*

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LECTURE XII.

THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN.

The antagonism between the spiritual and the secular
head of Western Christendom, as I have already more
than once observed, went farther to shape medieval
history, and to give it its peculiar character, than any
of the other forces which were then working, potent
as, no doubt, were some of these. The antagonism
itself was inevitable, and not less inevitable that it
should force itself to the front, and to refuse to be re-
mitted to the sphere of abstract opinions about which
men might consent to differ. " These two powers, the
Empire and the Papacy, had grown up with indefinite
and necessarily conflicting relations; each at once
above and beneath the other; each sovereign and sub-
ject, with no distinct limits of sovereignty or subjec-
tion ; each acknowledging the supremacy of the
other, but each reducing that supremacy to a name or
less than a name. The authority of each depended on
loose and flexible tradition, on variable and contradic-
tory precedents, on titles of uncertain signification.
Head of the Church, Vicar of Christ ; Patrician, King
of Italy, Emperor. The Emperor boasted himself suc-
cessor to the whole autocracy of the Caesars, to Au-
gustus, Constantine, Charlemagne ; the Pope to that
of St. Peter, or of Christ Himself." (Milman).

The contention on the part of the spiritual power, as
i68

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN. 169

it uttered itself by the Pope, was as follows : " Men's
souls are more precious than their bodies. The
heavenly life is much more than the earthly. The
training for that heavenly life has been committed to
my charge, and I can suffer no interference with it.
And first and chiefly the ministers of this higher king-
dom must hold of me, must own no allegiance which
may compete or interfere with this prior allegiance to
me. Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no
harm. If they need correction, let them be remitted
to me for this." We know what the answer was. Our
Henry 11. uttered it with all . clearness ; not without
many faults in the manner of his utterance, but with a
true sense that there must be one law in the realm,
and that to this all must be submitted. " These," he
replied, " whom you claim to belong only to you, be-
long also to a mundane order of things of which I am
chief minister, and if they violate that order they shall
suffer for it as any other. Kings are of God as well
as Popes ; and criminous clerks shall receive at our
hands the due reward of their deeds no less than
criminous laymen." Impossible as it is to deny the
justice of this answer, or to take our stand where
Becket, as representing the Church's claim, took his,
there was in that twelfth century far more to be urged
in its behalf than at first sight might appear. License
on the part of the Clergy to do evil without being
duly punished for it, this assuredly was not the object
for which our great Archbishop contended and died.
The untenable nature of his position and of the argu-
ments by which he defended it we can now see clearly
enough; but it was very far from being then so clear.
If I do not enter at full into this struggle, this will

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170 THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN,

not be as underrating its significance; but it is in
truth such a thrice-told tale, has in these last times
been told so often and by such masters in the art of
narration, that I shrink from going over the ground
again. You upbn your parts can scarcely have escaped
some acquaintance with it ; while I for mine shall gladly
devote the time thus gained to the setting forth some
other less familiar aspects of that same struggle, as it
wrought itself out upon a larger stage.

Your attention has been already called to the first
grand collision which grew out of the irreconcilable
pretensions of the kingdom and the priesthood, the
civil and the spiritual power. You have heard how
the quarrel, provoked by Gregory VIL, not without a
measure of right upon his side, seemed to have found
its settlement in the Concordat of Worms. But the
compromise which goes by this name was a truce and
no more ; the prologue, or perhaps more properly, the
first act of a portentous drama, which was not nearly
played out. Two other acts were to follow ; the sec-
ond closing with the Treaty of Constance (1183), the
third with the final extinction of the House of Hohen-
staufen (1268). It is quite true that this struggle, in
its second act and its third, was not so predominantly
one for spiritual objects as that of the Investitures had
been. There were fair kingdoms of this world which
would prove the prize of the victor, with other earthly
things precious, whereon Pope and Emperor had alike
set their heart It will be my aim to put before you
to-day some of the leading features of the conflict, the
several aids and alliances with which the combatants
entered upon it, the alternations of victory and defeat,
and then the close, and its results.

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN. 171

This conflict, let me say at the outset, had features
of its own, which distinguished it alike from conflicts
that went before and from others that came after. It
was a struggle not for victory upon some one point,
but upon all ; such as should for ever determine who
should reign and who should serve ; and, with all the
fair words which from lime to time passed between the
combatants during the treacherous pauses of the battle,
there was no self-deception upon either side as to its
real meaning, — ^that it could only end with the com-
plete subjugation of the one or of the other. It has
been called, and with a certain justice, the stniggle of a
hundred years. But you must not be misled by these
words as though they implied open hostility, the raging
of a war without disguise, for all this time. There was
nothing of the kind ; but every possible variety of re-
lation, the actual clash of arms being rather the excep-
tion. Thus there were times, although these were
brief, when, having some identical objects and interests
to promote. Emperor and Pope were in real alliance ;
when they hunted heretics in couples, and in other
ways played into each other's hands. Thus the first
Frederick delivered Arnold of Brescia, a most dan-
gerous innovator, as men esteemed, and that alike in
Church and in State, to the will of the Pope (1155) J
while the second Frederick, probably believing nothing
himself, sent heretics and unbelievers by scores to the
stake. There were times of simulated friendship, each
watching and waiting his opportunity to do the other
a mischief, each in secret correspondence with the
other's mortal foes. And lasdy there were times when
the mask was dropped, and it was war to the ou trance,
each of the contending powers rallying all the forces

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172

THE POPES AND THE HOBENSTAUFEN.

and means of annoyance which it had at command,
and openly employing these for the inflicting of deadly
harm on the other.

There is another mistake which you must not fall
into ; for it would be a mistake to suppose of these
two powers, locked as they so often were in a mortal
embrace of hate, that either sought the entire destruc-
tion of the other. What each sought was the other's
submission ; that the grand question running through
all medieval history, "Which should be greatest?"
should be decided in its own favour. Neither desired;
nor indeed could have so much as conceived, the total
disappearance of the other; the world-king and the
world-priest belonging alike to the eternal order of
God's moral universe. What, moreover, would have
been the value of a Pope's triumph, if there had been
no Emperor whom he might keep starving in the
cold at his gate for days, or on whose neck he might
literally or figuratively plant his foot ? What, on the
other hand, would an Emperor's complete success have
been worth, unless there had been still a Pope whom,
as a kind of chief chaplain, he might order about at
his will like any other official of his Court? It was in
the drawing of the boundary line which separated the
several jurisdictions, and in the attempt so to draw it
that all substantial power should remain on one side,
that the never-dying source of contention lay.

It was mainly, but not exclusively, on Italian soil
that the long struggle which came to a head in the
time of the Hohenstaufen monarchs was fought out ;
— Italy, dowered as she was with her fatal gift of
beauty, being doomed to suffer intolerable outrages
and wrongs from the rude German hosts which tramp-

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN. 173

led on her as their victim and their prey. But what
she suffered in one shape she could inflict in another.
Intrigues first set on foot at Rome were only too suc-
cessful in stimulating the anarchy of Germany. The
Imperial dignity, tossed from one princely House to
another, from Prankish to Saxon, to Suabian, to Bava-
rian, resisted all attempts to compel it for any length
of time to continue in one stay. It was indeed a lead-
ing object in the policy of the Roman Court, and one \
of which it never lost sight, to hinder the Empire \
from becoming hereditary in any single House ; and
thus to avert the knitting of the German races into a
single nation, which might so easily have followed if
once a ruling family could have been founded. On
more occasions than one this seemed likely ; but in
the end by one fatality or another all hopes that so it
might prove invariably came to nothing. The task of
perpetuating the weakness by maintaining and multi-
plying the divisions of Germany, was only too easy.
Each new election might safely be trusted to leave be-
hind it many disappointed ambitions, one or more de-
feated competitors prepared to head an opposition,
sometimes an open revolt against successful rivals, so
that an anti-Caesar was never very difficult to find.

By the very necessities of her position, Rome was
in a manner driven to this activity of intrigue against
the peace and prosperity, above all, against the unity
of Germany. But apart from this, it was not a small
misfortune that so many among the noblest of the
German monarchs, instead of addressing themselves
to the reducing to some sort of order the anarchy of
their own realm, should again and again be drawn
aside to the pursuit beyond the Alps of objects

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174 THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEJST.

shadowy, remote, unattainable, or having no real
worth even if for the moment attained ; that in this
same pursuit the flower of German youth, from gene-
ration to generation, should whiten the batde-fields of
Italy with their bones, or perish by deadlier though in-
visible foes, by the fever and the malaria, which then
as now brooding over the land, girdled Rome above
all as with a very girdle of death.

But what the Popes of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries dreaded perhaps even more than German
unity, was the meeting of the Imperial Crown and
that of the Two Sicilies on a single head. With the
Norman adventurers who had planted their foot in
South Italy, and little by litde had founded principal-
ities, and in the end a kingdom there, there had been
hostile collisions at the first ; but the Pope and the
Normans perceived after a while that they needed
and could effectually help one another, so that these
Norman settlements, instead of a menace to the Pa-
pacy, had become rather a support and a defence.
But in the event of the meeting of the Crowns on one
head, the case would be very different. Cooped and
confined, — with an enemy, it might be, on either side,
— set as between two fires, what room would there be
for the Pope to breathe ? Qr should matters come to
the worst, what avenue of escape from his foes would
be open to him ? This union of the two crowns upon
one head, dreaded so much, actually came to pass
during the course of this struggle, when Henry, son of
Frederick Barbarossa married Constantia, the Norman
inheritress of those fair southern lands. But it did not
draw after it that accession of strength to the Empire
which its friends had hoped, and its enemies feared.

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN, 175

Let me briefly sketch the course which the actual
conflict took. I observed in a former Lecture that
the Empire was very inadequately represented in the
first grand clash of arms between the two powers
which divided the world, — Henry IV. being ill to
match with Gregory VII. The same could not be now
affirmed. The batde was a battle of giants, but of
giants not all ranged on one side. How grand, and
at times how pathetic, are the actors who now sweep
across the historic stage ; for we are now in the heart
of the Middle Ages, and they are yielding their might-
iest and most wondrous births. On the one side
there are the two Fredericks. And first Frederick
BarbarosSa, or Red Beard, as the Italians with their
fondness for nicknames derived from personal pecu-
liarities, called him ; greatest Emperor since Charles,
unless indeed Otto I. should dispute the palm of
greatness with him ; great-grandson of Henry IV., in-
heritor therefore of an unfinished feud; one of the
noblest figures of medieval Europe; as profoundly
convinced that he wore the Imperial Crown by the
grace of God, that he was God*s second Vicar upon
earth, as ever Pope was convinced that he sat by
immediate delegation from Chnst in the Chair of St
Peter. Frederick, I believje, always meant to be just ;
but his justice not seldom hardened into severity, —
that we call it by no harsher name, — when he had to
do with those whom he counted rebels and revolters
from the authority by God committed to him. Gen-
erous he was, and word-keeping; of unstained private
life ; able, when the battle was won, and, harder still,
when the batde was lost, to forget and to forgive ; so
that one does not praise him overmuch who has re-

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176 THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAVFEN.

cendy styled him "die noblest type of medieval chiv-a^ ^^
airy in many of its shadows, in all its lights." " The
Xerxes of the Middle Ages" Sismondi has called him,
but wholly misapprehending the man and his work.
It is not merely that there was nothing of the effemi-
nate Sultan in him, who did not sit upon a throne and
look on while others were fighting for him, but who
was ever to be found himself in the " high places of
the field." Plainly, however, it is another charge
which this comparison is intended to convey, — namely,
that as Xerxes was the lawless invader of Greece, so'
Frederick of Italy. He came thither, no doubt, in
arms, but as claimant of stricdy legal rights. That as
King of Italy and wearer of the iron crown, he pos-
sessed some rights, even those who opposed him the
most admitted, only contesting the extent and charac-
ter of those rights. It might have been better if he
had recognized that, in the altered conditions of the
world, those rights were growing into wrongs, and
had abstained from urging them ; but it is somewhat
too much, when this, namely that he did not thus
renounce them, is laid against him as a crime.

The great commercial and manufacturing cities of
Lombardy, rapidly growing into sovereign and inde-
pendent commonwealths, could ill brook the resusci-
tation of claims which seemed to them to belong to a
dead past. These cities, or the richer, stronger, more
populous among them, — Milan above all, — were allies
upon whom th? Pope, if it came to the worst, could
securely rely; even as he found it well worth his
while to appear as the champion of their liberties, to
play the part of chief demagogue of Italy. Inner
bonds might be few between him and them, but so

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN.

177

far as those who have the same enemies are allies
and friends, they were such; and it is hardly too much
to say that if the Papacy was able to bring this tremen-
dous struggle to a .victorious close, it owed this tri-
umph quite as much to the Lombard League as to its
own spiritual weapons, excommunication and inter-
dict; upon which, indeed, it was very far from exclu-
sively relying.

When Frederick crossed the Alps to revive claims
which, through the internal troubles of Germany, had
been long in abeyance, it might have seemed at first
as though all which he demanded would be yielded to
him, without his needing to have recourse to arms.
The Lombard cities, indeed, stood sullenly aloof, but
did not at once make up their minds to resistance.
Pope Adrian IV., — he was the only Englishman who
ever wore the tiara, — ^accepted with the best grace he
could a visit which he was unable to avert, and set the
golden crown of Empire on Frederick's head. At the
same time it is curious to note the vein of suspicion
which from the first ran through the intercourse of
these two, their inability to refrain from petty slights
and irritations of each other. Thus the Emperor, ac-
cording to a custom as old, some averred, as Con-
stantine, did upon certain great occasions lead the
palfrey of the Pope, and hold his stirrup when he
alighted. The complaints were loud upon Adrian's
part that this mark of respect was turned into an in-
sult, Frederick having held the left stirrup when he
should have held the right; to which the other thought
it enough to reply that the Hohenstaufens had not
much experience in the duties of a groom, and that
thus the mistake was not very wonderful. Other

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178 THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAU^EN.

complaints too there were, grounded in the main on
small breaches of etiquette, although not without their
significance. Nor was the Emperor without his coun-
ter plaints ; but on these I cannot enter.

Resistance began in the Lombard cities. They
could not accommodate themselves to the new order
of things. Pope Adrian, whose griefs were not all so
fantastic as one which I have just related, was drawn
before long, by the inevitable drift of things, to the
taking part with his natural allies ; and thus the long
woe began. In this first shock of arms, a shock which
lasted for some two and twenty years (11 54-1 176),
victory, which at first inclined to the banners of the
Emperor, was not always true to these* Seven Ger-
man armies had crossed the Alps at his bidding;
Milan he had twice taken, once razed to the ground,
but only to see it rise from its ashes more powerful
than ever ; while his son's son was to learn what a
harvest of undying hate he had thus sown in Italian
hearts. Defeated at Legnano (1176), one of the bat-
tles which are the turning points of history, he accept-
ed the inevitable, renounced by the treaty of Con-
stance (ii&3)all save a few shadowy and well-nigh
nominal rights over the Lombard cities ; and, yet bit-
terer humiliation, recognized Alexander III., against
whom he had raised up three antipopes in succession,
as the true spiritual chief of Christendom. With all this
Frederick was formidable still, and had by no means
renounced his hope of bringing back the relations of
Pope and Emperor to what they had been in the time
of Charles and the Ottos. But his part was played
The tidings of the actual fall of Jerusalem (1187) sus-
pended for a little the quarrels of the West. The

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN.

179

grand old warrior King girded himself for his latest
task, and died as he would have wished to die, lead-
ing a crusading host to the rescue of the Sepulchre
where his Lord had lain (i 189).

His son and successor Henry VI. inherited none of
his virtues, but he did inherit his energy of purpose,
his far-reaching designs ; and these never seemed
nearer their accomplishment than now. Alexander
Hi., — a great pontiff, though he may not quite take
rank with the greatest, and we see him at his weakest
in his relations to Thomas of Canterbury, — ^was no
more.' Against Henry, in the full vigour of his youth,
was arrayed a feeble nonagenarian, Caelestin III. But
deaths altogether unexpected more than once during
the course of this struggle brought safety to the Pa-
pacy; and, when matters seemed at the worst, changed
in an instant the whole aspect of affairs. So was it
now ; Henry, dying in his thirty-second year, left be-
hind him a son of two years old (i 197). Pope Caeles-
tin, swiftly following him to the grave, was succeeded
by Pope Innocent III. Where there was strength be-
fore, there was weakness now; and where 'weakness,
there was strength.

Henry's infant son had been already elected King
of the Romans, but this election was now set aside.
And yet, strange to say, it was with Innocent's active
good- will and favour that the young Frederick, some
fifteen years later, being then only sisventeen years
old, aspired to the Imperial throne, and took it, sq to
speak, by storm. The Pope, confident in his strength,
and nothing doubting that he could mould to his will
the stripling who had grown up as his ward, litde
guessed that this second Frederick should prove a

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l8o THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN.

more dangerous foe than ever the first had been. It
was he whom his wondering contemporaries hailed as
the Stupor Mundi, the " Astonishment of the World."
This title, or one very closely resembling it, had been
already given to Otto III. ; but he, " inheritor of un-
fulfilled renown," died too soon to show how far he
had deserved it Poet and scholar, legislator and war-
rior, busy with manifold speculations about manifold
things, Frederick was in many ways far in advance
of his age, which may have resented this superiority
of his, and in its judgments of him may possibly have
wronged him ; he, if this was so, offering, as it must
be owned, not a little provocation for any injustice that
it did him.

By his motlier's side Italian blood was in his veins ;
and all his sympathies were Italian. Not in rugged
Germany but on the sunny shores of the Mediterra-
nean, most of all at Palermo, he loved to keep his
Court, so brilliant, dissolute, and refined. Cruel he
was, as voluptuaries so often are, though not as his
father had been ; shocking too the public opinion of
Christendom, by the familiar terms on which he lived
with his Saracen subjects, — by the mocking words, the
shafts of scorn, which, as men reported, were launched
by him against holiest mysteries of our faith. Dante,
Ghibelline as he was, must have given credit to these
reports; for he places Frederick, and him alone among
the Emperors, in hell, and among the heresiarghs there.

Fair words and friendly offices were exchanged at •
first between Innocent and Frederick ; but it was not
long before the inborn antagonism between Pope and
Hohenstaufen revealed itself once more ; and the open
conflict between them, inevitable from the first, was

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN. i8l

close at hand, when the death of Innocent deferred its
outbreak for a while. Honorius JII. (1216-1227), a
man of peace, would have fain patched up the quarrel,
but this could not be. Not so Gregory IX., who on
the first provocation, flinging the scabbard aside, ad-
dressed himself to the conflict with an energy which
seventy-seven years, for so many he numbered at his
election, could not abate ; no, nor yet the ninety and
more which he numbered" when he bequeathed the
conflict, still undecided, to his successor. Frederick in
an unlucky hour had taken upon him the Crusader's
vow, which yet he showed no readiness to fulfil, aware
probably of the advantage which would be made of his
absence from his dominions. It was a terrible hold
which he had given to his foes, and they did not fail to
make the most o( it Excommunicated again and
again, for not going to Palestine according to his en-
gagement, for going without the Papal benediction, for
returning without the Papal leave ; every place which
he profaned with his presence stricken with an Inter-
dict ; heaven and earth fighting against him, — for so in
that age it must have seemed to most, sometimes per-
haps to himself, — there yet were no signs of yielding
in him.

One deceitful truce calling itself a peace might fol-
low upon another ; negotiations might go forward even
in the midst of arms ; but the distrust on both sides
was too profound, the enmity too strong, for these
ever to lead to anything. New griefs on either side
were urged ; and then presendy it thundered and
lightened from the ecclesiastical heaven ; new excom-
munications against Frederick being piled upon the
old, as though it had been impossible to curse him

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1 82 THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN.

enough. But indeed there was no weapon on either
side which was not snatched at, if only it could work
effectual harm to the other. Pope Gregory in a circu-
lar to the prelates and potentates of Europe solemnly
denounced Frederick as the beast rising out of the
sea, and full of the names of blasphemy. But the
Apocalypse was not to be interpreted all on one side ;
and the Pope was proclaimed in a counter-manifesto
of the Emperor's as the great Red Dragon, deceiving
the whole world; the second Balaam^ speaking lies
for reward ; the personal Antichrist ; the Angel from
the bottomless pit To such a white heat of fiercest
mutual hate had matters between these two arrived,
who according to the original idea of the kingdom and
the priesthood should have been a mutual strength
and support the one to the other.

So all-absorbing was the animosity between them
that the frightful inroad of the Mongol hordes, whose
triumph would have been fatal alike to both, could do
nothing to allay or even to suspend it. These, having
wasted the better part of Asia, had just at this
moment burst upon Eastern Europe (1240), inflicting
upon it all of worst which the Hungarians had inflict-
ed three centuries before; but neither Pope nor
Caesar could lend the slightest help to the noble
leader who with his scanty host stood in the breach
and died there ; and who, vanquished though he
seemed, did yet at Liegnitz set bounds to the further
advance of this hideous chivalry ; — ^Tartars indeed, as
men in the anguish of their fear proclaimed, for they
were the very brood of Tartarus or hell.

Whether, if Frederick had lived, he would not have
found the Papacy and the Lombard League and the

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN, 183

Mendicant Friars, which last never served the Papacy
better or more zealously than now, too strong for him ;
whether, notwithstanding many partial successes, the
battle which raged in every corner of Italy and in
much of Germany was not going against him, may
very fairly be a question ; but with his untimely death
(1250), — for he had but reached his fifty-sixth year, —
the Imperial or Ghibelline cause was lost. The strug-
gle, it is tnie, did not end for years to come ; it could
not indeed end so long as a Hohenstaufen was in life;
but the issues of it were virtually determined. I can-
not follow it further ; only I must spare a few words
for the epilogue to this long tragedy, itself in some
sort more tragic than all which had gone before.

Certainly Rome could not boast that she scorned to
war with the dead. She pursued with .inextinguish-
able hatred all of that detested Suabian House.
Frederick left several children, legitimate and illegiti-
mate, behind him. But a weird was upon him and his
race. An evil destiny pursues them ; they perish one
by one, and by strange dooms ; — until, last male scion
of that Imperial family, comes

" wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood.'*

It is the young and beautiful Conradin, grandson of
Frederick, least guilty — humanly speaking, the one
unguilty of a guilty race, — ^who yet, as so often hap-
pens, gathers up in himself all the curse and the pun-
ishment which was due to all, and, paying the things
which he never took, attests how impossible it is to
dissociate the members of a family from each other.
He was safe in Germany ; but would fain win back the

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1 84 THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN.

kingdom of the Sicilies, which by right of inheritance
be claims as his own. Defeated in this attempt by
Charles of Anjou, whom in a disastrous hour for Italy
the Pope had invited to take that kingdom in posses-
sion, Conradin stoops his neck to the headsman's axe
at Naples (1268).

And now the end has come: the Hohenstaufens
have perished from the face of the earth ; and the Pa-
pacy issues forth visibly triumphant from this long and
terrible struggle — not unscarred, yet never greater,
or indeed never so great. It has encountered the one
power which could pretend to dispute the world with
it, and has overcome it. "With Frederick fell the
Empire. From the ruin which overwhelmed the
greatest of its Houses it emerged, living indeed and
destined to a long life; but so shattered, crippled, and
degraded that it could never more be to Europe or
to Germany what it once had been " (Bryce). What
is known as the Long Interregnum succeeded, — three
and twenty years of frightful anarchy ; until Rodolph
of Hapsburg, at length chosen Emperor (1273),
brought some sort of order into Germany again. But
now the armed pilgrimage to Rome for the obtaining
a coronation at the Papal hands fell so far out of use
that more than sixty years elapsed before Henry of
Luxembourg attempted to renew it ; and his brief ca-
reer, so big with unfulfilled promise, being ended
(131 3), a new interregnum left the Italians ample
leisure to dissolve whatever ties still attached them to
Germany. Meanwhile the French monarchs, con-
scious of the growing power of France where all was
knitting together into a compact military monarchy,
while in Germany all was loosening and dissolving,

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THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN, 185

took up the policy of opposition to Papal preten-
sions which had dropped from German hands. The
grander features of the conflict do not produce them-
selves again ; but when we come to the time of Boni-
face VIII. there will be occasion to speak of the im-
mense consequences which from this resulted. It will
then perhaps be seen how "the art, the policy, the
tyranny of France from this period inflicted deeper
wounds upon the dignity and authority of the Papal
See than the haughty hostility of the Hohenstaufens."

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l86 THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES

LECTURE XIII.

THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES OF THJ^
MIDDLE AGES.

It was very graciously ordered by Him who orders
all things for the good of his Church, that the leading
outlines of its teaching should, in almost all main par-
ticulars, have been traced and authoritatively fixed
before that general break-up overtook the Western
world, of which the invasion by the Northern tribes
was the immediate cause. It thus came to pass that
the faithful, notwithstanding the darkness and igno-
rance of the ages which followed, found themselves in
conscious possession of precious results which, with
the scantier helps at their own command, tRey could
never for themselves have attained. Things which
would have been too high for them 'had not been too
high for the well-trained and accomplished theolo-
gians of the fourth and fifth centuries ; and upon their
labours the Church of the next centuries thankfully
entered. Nor can there be any more signal evidence
of the completeness with which the Church of the
Fathers had done, and not for itself only, the work of
defining the truth which it held, had drawn accurate
lines of demarcation for the separating of this truth
from the errors upon either side which it denied, than
this, namely the few struggles involving questions of
doctrine which agitate the Middle Ages. Whatever

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OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 187

the early Church had settled, it was very rarely that
ahy endeavour was made, or any desire shown, to dis-
turb the settlement. There was a feeble effort at the
close of the eighth century (794), on the part of some
in Spain to revive, though with a* difference, the Nes^
torian heresy; but, this excepted, there was no at-
tempt, and perhaps no intentional one here, to go
back from the decisions of the Four Great Councils
as touching those cardinal truths of the Christian faith
on which they had definitively pronounced. Full of
speculative activity as the men of those ages were, the
questions which stirred them belonged to their own
times, and were not those of an earlier period brought
anew into debate. Such were looked at as having
received their final solution.

But strangely, and, as it proved, most unfortimately,
there had been one omission. The doctrine of the
manner of Christ's Presence in the Holy Eucharist, of
the relation in which the consecrated elements and the
Body and Blood of Christ stand to one another, had
never come into serious debate during those times,
and thus had never been the subject of authoritative
definition. Men had been content with the blessing,
and had not cared to define it. The leading Doctors
of the Church, it is true, had almost all uttered them-
selves upon it, but this by the way: not under the
special responsibilities which are so solemnly felt, when
some actually existing error needs to be condemned ;
nor with that careful weighing of every word which
can hardly fail to find place, when some precious but
imperilled truth demands to be affirmed, and the fron-
tier lines laid down which shall divide the truth from
the error that would fain usurp its room or encroach

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1 88 THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES

on its domain. That Christ was really present in the
Sacrament, that in that sacred feast He fed the faithful
with the precious food of his own most blessed Body
and Blood, in this all the Fathers of the early Church
were agreed. But, starting from this and always re-
maining true to this, they expressed themselves further
with a grand and careless boldness: as those upon
whom no heresy, watching to make its gain of any
random word, had imposed necessities of caution ; as
those, too, who felt that the most rapturous words
would not be too rapturous for a worthy magnifying
of that central mystery of the faith, and of the gift in
it made ours.

But matters could not always continue in this state.
It was inevitable that sooner or later the Church would
have to pronounce what it meant by this Presence,
which evidently might mean so much or so little.
When men once began to give an account to them-
selves of this, how near, on one side, lay the peril of
refining that Presence away into mere words which,
seeming to mean something, yet in fact meant nothing,
or assuredly nothing with any righf to so august a
name. How near, on the other side, was the danger
of a degeneration into a coarse materialism, the super-
sensual truth which that word embodied being drawn
down from its spiritual heights, adapted to the meanest
capacity and the least spiritual mind, with all the true
mystery gone from it. How certain it was that sooner
or later extravagances on this side or on that, if not on
both, would need to be repressed and condemned.
And so it proved.

Paschasius Radbert (b. 786, d. 865 ; but both these
dates are doubtful), a learned monk, well skilled in all

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OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 189

the theological lore of his age, put forth his world-
famous treatise On the Sacrament of the Body and
Blood of Christy with which the conflict may be said to
have begun, in 831. It was the first regular and com-
prehensive treatise on the Holy Eucharist which had
ever appeared, at all events the first of which any no-
tice has reached us. Thirteen years later, and having
in the meantime recast the book in a more popular
form, he published it again. Coming as it did now
from one who occupied a foremost position in the
Church of France — he was Abbot of New Corbey —
it attracted the attention which at first had been
denied it. There is nothing wonderful in this. It fell
in with many tendencies of the age^ with the direction
of popular thought and feeling which was more and
more craving after an outward and visible embodi-
ment of the inward and spiritual. It gave form and
consistency to that which was already the floating be-
lief of multitudes, who were delighted to find elabo-
rated all round, and with a certain theological justifica-
tion, that which hitherto they had obscurely and more
or less unconsciously held. What Paschasius taught
and claimed to be th^ Church's teaching was this,
namely that in the Holy Eucharist, by virtue of the
priestly consecration and the operation of the Holy
Ghost which goes along with this, the substance of
bread and wine is changed into the substance of the
Body and Blood of Christ ; yet so that the accidents^
as they were called — in other words, the form, colour,
and taste of the elements — still, for the better exer-
cise of faith, remain. The word " transubstantiation "
does not appear in the book, indeed does not appear
till a much later date ; but all which the word implies

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I90 THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES

is here. The outspokenness of the book was a real
power. Many had taught before that Christ feeds the
faithful with his own Body and Blood, but their words
had been more or less open to a figurative interpreta-
tion, — ^had not at any rate absolutely excluded this.
He was resolved that, if he could help it, there should
henceforth be no mistake in the matter.

The immense embarrassments which ensued so
soon as ever, virtually or formally, this was accepted
as the Church's teaching ; the enormous difficulty of
weaving this into one coherent and consistent whole
with other accepted articles of the faith, — of dealing
with all the consequences which it involved and which
on it must follow; the infinite ingenuity which has
been expended in attempts of the kind ; all these are
matters, sufficiently familiar to theological scholars.
I cannot undertake to treat of them here. Only I
will observe that now it might be seen how immense
a misfortune it was that the Church had not long since
been called dogmatically to declare what she held, and
what she condemned, in a matter so high and so diffi-
cult The inevitable conflict had not been escaped ; it
had only been adjourned, and adjourned from favour-
able times, those of the great early Doctors, to other
far less favourable ; for assuredly it was not the ninth
century which one would willingly have chosen for the
coming up for discussion of a mystery so sublime.

Great as was the favour which this treatise found with
the many, there were also not a few who were offended.
The theological leaders of the age were divided into
opposite camps. Hincmar of Rheims sided with Pas-
chasius, and Remigius, of Rheims as well ; so also
did Ratherius of Verona; — names such as these attest-

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191

ing the strength with which the spirit of the age was
setting in this direction. But on the other side was
Rabanus Maurus, a scholar of Alcuin, and perhaps
the most distinguished theologian of his time. Better
known ta us now, at least by name, is Ratramn (d.
868). Bertram he is often called, but by mistake ; —
his book, which has a literary interest no less than a
theological, being sometimes ascribed to a greater
than he, even to Scotus Erigena (see p. 208), who, as
there is reason to suppose, did yrrite against Paschasi-
us, though his work has not reached us. These, and
others with them, denounced his teaching on this
matter as novel and erroneous ; yet did not always in
their resistance to it observe the golden mean : they
might be sometimes likened to the woodman who, in
his eagerness to disengage the oak from the ivy which
is strangling it, incautiously wounds the tree itself.
The conditions of the struggle were, indeed, in every
way unfortunate; above all unfortunate in this, namely
that what Paschasius taught of error attached itself
closely to what the Church had always held of truth,
might only too easily be confounded with this, or mis-
taken for it; even as numbers to this day confound any
Real Presence with Transubstantiation, and, in their
zeal to get rid of the superstitious accretion, are intole-
rant of the truth on which this has been superinduced.
In the two centuries which intervened between Pas-
chasius Radbert and Berengar of Tours, — ^among the
dark ages two of the darkest, — little or nothing was
done for the scientific working out of the immense
problems with the solution of which the Church had
burdened itself when it adopted the teaching of Pas-
chasius for its own. In using this language I do not

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192 THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES

imply that there had been as yet any authoritative al-
lowance of his teaching or condemnation of that which
it excluded ; but only that such as would not receive it
were growing to be more and more regarded in the
judgment of the many as of questionable rightness of
faith ; the popular sentiment which anticipated, and at
the same time prepared the way for, dogmatic defini-
tion, pronouncing itself ever more strongly against
them. But they were not to be silenced without one
struggle, one vigorous protest more. When indeed
this was made, it did not fail to exemplify the danger
which was most to fear. The Charybdis of Transub-
stantjation was effectually avoided; but in efforts to
keep clear of this it was often forgotten that there was
a Scylla of mere spiritualism on the other side.

From Berengar (born about looo, and called of
Tours to distinguish him from otliers of the same
name), the protest came. Following in the footsteps
of Ratramn, but with clearer insight into what he was
doing and a more definite purpose, and probably under
the spell of a mightier spirit, that namely of Scotus
Erigena, — ^he renewed the opposition to Paschasius
which had well-nigh died out But, while rejecting the
gross carnal error of Paschasius, he rejected with it, so
it seems to me, a portion of the truth on which that er-
ror had fastened itself; the true doctrine of the Eucha-
rist meanwhile retreating out of sight, there to tarry
until better times should come round. A letter of Be-
rengar to Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury that
should be, and at that time Prior of Bee in Normandy,
— a letter which there may fairly be a question whether
Lanfranc was justified in allowing others to make use
of, — first brought him into trouble. He was condemned

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193

by Pope Leo IX. in a Council at Rome ; again in the
same year at Vercelli (1050). "Would God," exclaims
Luther, "that all Popes had borne themselves so Chris-
tianly in all things as this Pope in the matters of Be-
rengar," — his hatred of sacramentaries proving for
the moment stronger than his hatred of Popes.

Berengar, though condemned, had many powerful
friends ; these, however, by no means all or nearly all
agreeing with him. Among them was no less a man
than Hildebrand, at this time Cardinal Legate in
France, and the coming Pope. Having succeeded in
persuading Hildebrand of the soundness of his faith, —
for Berengar was prepared to sign a declaration, "The
bread and wine of the altar after consecration are
the Body and Blood of Christ," — he ventured to ap-
pear before a new Synod at Rome, where it was in-
tended that he should clear himself (1059). But, as
will often happen where a public assembly has to be
reckoned with, matters did not take their course ac-
cording to the programme designed. As many as
counted Berengar a heretic, and a shifty one, were re-
solved there should be no mistake, no escape for him
under shelter of equivocal statements ; and there was
put before him for his acceptance quite 'another pali-
node, with no vague generalities or convenient creep-
holes. This, not for a moment believing (for so he tells
us), but overborne by multitudes, and in fear of imme-
diate death, he signed. No sooner, however, had he
put the Alps between himself and his enemies than he
recanted his recantation, and openly bewailed the
weakness out of which he had set his hand to the doc-
ument forced upon him. Entangled before long in
angriest controversy with Lanfranc and with others,

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194

THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES

he reaffirmed all which for the moment he had re-
tracted ; and so filled Western Christendom with his
doctrine that Hildebrand, now Pope, was compelled to
cite him to make answer for himself (1078).

The great Pontiff, who was an eminent Church-ruler
rather than a highly trained theologian, and who had
no desire that the existing freedom should be restricted
by a new dogmatic definition, would fain have helped
Berengar again, and by the same means as before.
Some correspondence, only recendy brought to light
and published in 1850, reveals how much had passed
by letter between them on the subject Obtaining
from Berengar a new and somewhat more explicit
confession of faith, Gregory avouched himself at an
assembly of Bishops satisfied with it, and would fain
have had others satisfied as well. They were not sat-
isfied, and made him clearly to understand as much.
And he now, who on occasion could set his face as a
flint, evidendy did not count that such an occasion was
here. Prepared to go far, he yet was not prepared to
go all lengths, in Berengar's behalf. He had another
work and that a far mightier in hand ; nothing less
than the complete elevation of the spiritual above the
temporal, of the successor of St Peter above the suc-
cessor of Caesar. It was a task for the putting through
of which it was absolutely necessary that his own or-
thodoxy should be above the breath of suspicion.
None must be able to cast in his teeth with any show
of truth that he was a fautor of heretics. But his ene*
mies were even then making use of the evident favour
with which he regiarded the heretic already twice con-
demned ; and when Berengar was rash enough to ap-
peal to him as in a certain sympathy with himself on

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OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

195

the matter in dispute, Gregory at once threw him over,
demanding from him instant subscription to the form
of recantation from which he shrunk the most. It was
again to be manifest that Berengar had not what we
have lately learned to call " the courage of his opin-
ions." After a faint struggle he signed ; willing, as he
subsequently avowed, to commit himself to the mercy
of God rather than to theirs into whose hands, as an
obstinate and relapsed heretic, he would otherwise
have fallen. Deeply wounded in conscience, feeling
that he had secured his safety at the cost of his
Christian honour, likening himself to Aaron and to
Peter, — they also both of them unfaithful to God
through the fear of men, — ^he spent the long years
which yet remained to him (for he did not die till
1088), in retirement ; indebted, no doubt, to the po-
tent protection of Gregory that, despite of a third
retractation, he was not molested any further.

A word or two more concerning the man and his
teaching. And first concerning the man. Who is there
that would not fain. adopt, if he might, Coleridge's
judgment of Berengar, so glorious in its charity?
Who is there that is not disposed to feel and think
somewhat worse of himself, when he is not able to
make this judgment his own ? And yet such is my
condition. I have no choice but to say that, as it
seems to me, there has been a disposition to overrate
Berengar, and this both intellectually and morally.
An adroit dialectician, when such were rarer than half
a century later they became, a scholar of very various
accomplishments, gifted with a singular power of draw-
ing and attaching friends, he was from the beginning
restless and vain, ill content to walk in old paths.

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196 THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES

eager to make a figure in the world, and in the end
making one only too notable. Incapable he plainly
was of taking the true measure of himself, for else he
would not have twice challenged dangers from which
at the decisive moment he shrunk. Incapable he also
showed himself of taking the true measure of others.
When one considers what was the relative calibre of
Lanfranc and of him, the insolent tone of superiority in
which he addresses the Italian scholar and theologian,
and this before any personal antagonism had sprung
up between them, can only, as one reads, fill with a
painful astonishment.

Then too there is a passionate feebleness about him.
He scolds like an angry woman. A much smaller
man than Abelard, who will presendy appear on the
scene, he shares with him in a very unpleasant trait,
namely that he cannot conceive of any opposing or
even disagreeing with him, except as impelled to this
by ignorance, or dishonesty, or personal malice. His
adversaries are "savage wild beasts;" a Bishop of
Padua, who was not on his side, is " the Paduan buf-
foon ;'' another is " the Pisan Antichrist'* If he has to
speak of Pope Leo, " that holy lion of yours," he ob-
serves, *' is very far from being the Lion of the tribe
of Judah." As the conflict deepens, he over and over
again assures Lanfranc, and in every variety of lan-
guage, that he lies, or, slightly varying the charge, that
he speaks against the testimony of his own conscience.
Certainly his own writings leave an impression about
him as of a man singularly wanting in self-restraint,
with litde sense of personal dignity, grievously de-
ficient in that unfailing mark of true nobleness, the
power of doing justice to a foe.

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OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

197

So much for the man. But his doctrine, was it a
timely protest against errors and exaggerations of
Paschasius which the Church had adopted and vir-
tually made her own ? or was there danger from his
teaching lest both should go, the error and the truth,
— lest with that which it would be gain to lose, there
should be also lost that whose loss would have been
irreparable ? As I have said already, it seems to me
the last, and that his success would have been ^ a
calamity. No doubt the truth of the Sacrament was
in his time dangerously overlaid, but it was not lost ;
and all experience has shown that in these matters it
is far easier to take from the too much than to add to
the too litde. Superstition sometimes guards the
truth which it distorts, caricatures, and in part con-
ceals. Putting all things together, I am unable to
share in the sympathy with which this revolt of his
against the prevailing dogma of his time has often
been regarded. It presents itself to riie in the light of
a feeble and ill-concerted insurrection, which so mixed
up objects desirable and undesirable, that those who
could wish its success for some reasons could only
deprecate and dread this success for others; an insur-
rection which, having been presently put down, had
for its only consequence the fastening of the yoke
more firmly than ever upon their necks, in whose be-
half and for whose deliverance it had originally been
planned. At the same time it is not easy to affirm
what the doctrinal results of success on his part would
have been; neither does an increased acquaintance
with his own writings make it* easier. Since Lessing's
discovery, something more than a century ago, in the
library at Wolfenbiittel, of Berengar's latest answer to

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198 THE EVCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES

Lanfranc, and its publication in 1834 by Neander, it
cannot be said that we are compelled to derive from
others, and those for the most part adversaries, our
knowledge of what his doctrine was ; which to a con-
siderable extent was the case before. But the diffi-
culty remains. There are statements of his which
satisfy all just demands; but then again there are
others in which he seems " to hedge," and which would
leave the words of Consecration a trope, and the
Sacrament itself litde more than a commemorative
meal. There will be always, I think, a difference of
opinion as to which is the truest voice of the man.

A few words before we leave this theme. It is cer-
tainly a thought of infinite sadness that this Sacra-
ment, — the very bond of innermost communion of the
faithful with their Lord, and through Him with one
another, — ^should have thus proved so often, and, in
times which this course of Lectures does not reach,
will be found to prove still more, a source and spring
of strife and debate, dividing Churches, and then
dividing again the divided. And yet from the bitter
of this thought a sweet may be extracted. There is
comfort even here. How priceless it and its benefits
must have been felt to be, before men would contend
for it as they have done, counting it as the very apple
of their eye, so that he who wounded them here
wounded them in a part at once the tenderefet and the
most vital ; willing to set all upon the hazard, to taste
all bitternesses, in exiles, in prisons, on scaffolds, at the
fiery stake, for what they felt to be the truth of God
in this matter. And no wonder. In the Sacraments,
above all in this Sacrament, is the great abiding wit-
ness in the Church, a witness not in word only but

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OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 199

also in act, against all merely rationalistic explanations
of our relation to Christ and his to us. We are
herein and hereby brought into real and direct con-
tact with the whole Christ, and He with us; translated
out of a spiritualistic world of shadows into a true
kingdom of realities.

And another comforting thought may abate the
sadness with which we contemplate the endless differ-
ences with which men have learned to regard this
holiest mystery of all No doubt there can be but one
truth about it, and all which is not this is wrong. But
those who miss this absolute truth, we are sometimes
tempted to think of them as missing the blessing of
that which they underrate, or— I will say overrate, for
that is impossible — which they wrongly rate. Let us
be reassured. God is greater than our hearts. Many
a one who, under imperfect teaching, has come to this
as no more than a commemorative rite with some
vague ill-defined solemnity clinging to it, has gone
away strengthened and inwardly nourished, as he
only shall fully know and understand in that day when
Christ shall quicken the mortal bodies of his saints.
God's purposes of grace are not so lighdy defeated,
the ordinances which He has appointed are not so
easily robbed of their blessing, as we too often as-
sume. Let us devoutly thank Him that the condition
of receiving the grace of this heavenly feast does not
lie in holding what Paschasius Radbert held about it,
or in denying what Paschasius Radbert held about it ;
in being a Berengarian, or in being an anti-Beren-
garian. There are things which may be too high for
us, too high for our understanding, but not too high
for our using and enjoying; and of such things this is
one, and the greatest

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LECTURE XIV.
THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

The passion for the Crusades and for the Scholastic
Theology may be regarded severally as the outer and
inner expression of one and the same movement in
the heart and mind of Western Christendom. As by
the Crusades men avouched that they would no longer
be satisfied merely to hear of that land which the Son
of God had hallowed by his presence, by his life, and
by his death, but must have the very land itself in pos-
session, not walking in this matter merely by faith
when it was" free to them to walk also by sight, so
fared it presently in another region as well. There
were as adventurous spirits, as chivalrous hearts in
the cloister as in the camp. These too will not be
content until they have grasped — not by faith only, but
with every faculty of their being, and therefore in-
tellectually no less than morally and spiritually, — that
entire body of truth taught by Christ and by his
Church. What they have taken upon trust, upon the
Church's word, they have so taken in the fullest assur-
ance that it would justify itself to the reason as well.
And that it can so justify itself throughout, that the
auctoritates and the rationes^ as severally they were
called, were in perfect harmony with each other, the
Schoolmen made it their task to show.

But the Schoolmen, — what exacdy do we mean

300

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THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN. 201

when we speak of these ? who were they ? The name,
which oftentimes implies so much, reveals so much,
does not Ijelp us here. A scholasticus in medieval
Latin might be a teacher, or he might be a learner; all
which the word affirms is that he has sometl^aig to do
with schools. We must then look further for an ex-
planation of what the Schoolmen were. Persons,
some will reply, who occupied themselves with ques-
tions like this, How many angels could dance at the
same instant upon the point of a needle ? or with
others like to this. Never having read a line of their
writings, absolutely uninformed of the conditions,
moral and intellectual, of Western Christendom which
gave birth to these Schoolmen, and which at the time
left room for no other birth, they have no hesitation
in passing their judgment of contempt upon them.
Thus, if Albert the Great is named, — Albertus Mag-
nus as he is more commonly called, — their ignorance
about him may be absolute, but they will not let him
pass without observing, and with a perfectly gratuitous
contempt, that there was nothing great about him but
his name. So, not long since I read.

This contempt, it is worth remarking, is very far
from being shared by the more illustrious thinkers of
the modern world, — not, for example, by Hegel, or
Alexander Von Humboldt; the latter characterizing
the disquisitions of that same unfortunate Albertus
on the subjects with which he. Von Humboldt, was
chiefly conversant, as " admirable beyond expression,
for the period in which he lived ; " while Von Raumer
declares, under like reservations, that " he might be
called the Aristode or Leibnitz of his age." And
only a few years ago one lost too early to the English

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202 THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

Church, wrote as follows: — "Through two eventful
centuries which witnessed, as they passed, the forma-
tion of nationalities, the establishment of representa-
tive government, the birth of vernacular literature,
and the grand climacteric of ecclesiastical power, the
philosophy of the Schools held on its way, not only
commanding with an undisputed sway the intellect of
those restless times, but elaborating its system, ex-
tending its influence, and drawing into its service
some of the highest minds that the Christian world
has produced. For two centuries longer, though
spent in vital energy, it continued to rule on, till with
the fifteenth century came the resistless onslaught,
which with the revival of classical letters broke for
ever the spell of its dominion " (Shirley).

I must add a personal reminiscence. Once when
as a young man I made with Arthur Hallam a pilgrim-
age to Highgate to have the privilege of hearing
Coleridge talk, he occupied himself for nearly an un-
broken hour with the intellectual greatness of the
Schoolmen. The revived interest in patristic litera-
ture which was so marked a feature of that time sug-
gested his special theme, which was this, namely, the
much larger amount of profit which might even now,
in his judgment, be gotten from the Schoolmen than
from the Fathers, whose frequent " nugacity," for I am
afraid he used that word, he denounced. The manner
in which Aquinas had anticipated and met nearly all
the later assaults on the miracles, and the greatness of
the speculative genius of our English Occam, with the
perilous lines on which his speculation was travelling
at the last, were the special subjects of his discourse,
or at all events are those which, after the lapse of so

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THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN,

203

many years, still survive the most clearly in my
memory.

Let me seek to explain to you, so far as I myself
understand, how this Theology arose; what the ob-
jects were which it proposed to itself; and how far it
can be said to have accomplished these. When in
the eleventh century the reviving activity of thought,
the fresh life which was everywhere stirring, sought
some material on which it might exercise itself, with
the exception of that which theology and the Church
supplied, such was nowhere to be found. All other
sciences in the troubles and tumults of the centuries
preceding had either wholly perished, or had been re-
duced to the barest and most meagre elements. The
classical treasures of antiquity, though not all or
nearly all irrecoverably gone, were mostly hidden out
of sight for the time. Papal Canons, decrees of
Councils, treatises of the Fathers and such like, were
apparendy all which had survived the mighty'^wreck.
In these, and in these only, was to be found the nour-
ishment for the mental craving of the age. If any
new intellectual edifice was to be reared by aid of ma-
terials which the past supplied, here and here only
were those materials to be obtained.

But whatever edifice was reared, it must conform
to certain conditions. Thus, there was no general
desire at this time to overpass the limits of thought
and speculation which the Church imposed. These
were felt to be, and, as compared to what any.
free-thinking in that age was likely to prove, they
were, blessed restraints. Whatever intellectual revolt
against the Roman system might be covertly brood-
ing in other hearts, there was none such among the

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204 ^^^ EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

builders here. With a very few exceptions they
wrought in the interests of Rome ; always intended
to be, and for a long time were, her most devoted
champions.

Here then were causes and conditions of the rise
of this Scholastic Theology: — In the first place a
great mental activity ; a young world, conscious of its
powers, and eager to exert them. And then secondly,
the absence of any material on which to exercise a
shaping, moulding power, save such as the Church
furnished; — no classical literature, no independent
ethics, no natural philosophy; a comparatively narrow
basis which compelled men to build high rather than
broad. Some words of Fuller are here to the point :
"As such who live in London and like populous
places, having but little ground for their foundations
to build houses on, may be said to enlarge the breadth
of their houses in height (I mean increasing their
room in many stories one above another) ; so the
Schoolmen in this age, lacking the latitude of general
learning and languages, thought to enlarge their ac-
tive minds by mounting up ; so improving their small
bottom with towering speculations, though some of
things mystical that might not — more of things diffi-
cult that could not — most of things curious that need
not — ^be known unto us." And thirdly, there was the
wish to put forth these activities only within such
limits and under such restraints as the Church laid
down, without the calling in question, or even the
evading, of any dogma or decision of hers. It was
the "how" and the "why," never the "what," of the
Church's teaching which the Schoolmen undertook to
discuss. Doctores they claimed to be, not Patres ; not,

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THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

205

as fathers, productive; not professing to bring out
of their treasure things new, but only to vindicate and
establish the old

Under limitations such as these, there was only one
great work which was possible for the human intellect.
It might organize the vast, often unshapely, mass of
materials which lay before it into one symmetrical
whole ; adjust the relations of the several parts to one
another ; atone, or put in the way of atonement, ap-
parent, or it might be, real contradictions ; it might, in
short, systematize theology, a work which was still
waiting to be done. The more illustrious teachers
of earlier periods of the Church had found each his
own special and peculiar work to perform, his own po-
sition to make good. Occupied with this, they had
not found the inclination or the leisure for a deliberate
oversight of the whole field of theology ; they had not
mapped it out as it demanded to be mapped out It
was to this that the Schoolmen addressed themselves,
— ^to the organizing after a true scientific method the^
rude undigested mass which, lay before them.

But this was not all. The arranging and marshall-
ing in due order of the enormous amount of materials
which the Medieval Church had inherited or acquired,
adjusting parts and proportions, bringing in the end
complete " Sums of Theology " to pass, — this was
neither all, nor nearly all, which these new champions
of the faith took in hand as a task worthy of their best
endeavours. This much patient industry could have
accomplished ; but their aims were higher and more
ambitious. What the Schoolmen set before them-
selves was nothing short of an attempt to justify to
the reason that which had first been received by faith.

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2o6 THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

Observe, they did not say, We will only believe that
which we have first understood. Such shallow ration-
alism would at once have put them in conflict with the
Church and with Scripture. But what they did say
was this. The truths which we receive by faith can
never be unreasonable. They may be, they often no
doubt will be, beyond and above our reason ; they can
never really be contrary to it ; and it cannot be dis-
pleasing to God, who has given us these reasoning
faculties, that we reverently seek to understand not
merely what He has done, for that is the object of
faith, but why He has done it, — ^in the search of which
last reason must serve as our guide.

This reconciliation of faith and reason by the giving
of its due rights to each, this inauguration of a super-
natural rationalism in the Church, was certainly a glo-
rious undertaking; I speak of it in its ideal perfection,
and not as, in the carrying through, it was more or less
marred by the fault of men. Such a reconciliation was
not indeed then and by these for the first time at-
tempted ; for it has always been recognized as a
principal office of theology. But the Schoolmen set
the attaining of this object before them with a more
perfect consciousness of what they were doing, and
strove to carry it out through the whole region of
Christian dogma more systematically, than any before
them had done. Nor did these spiritual freemasons
leave off until there had risen up under their hands
structures as marvellous in an architectonic complete-
ness of their own, as the magnificent domes and cathe-
drals which at the self-same time were everywhere
covering the face of Europe with novel forms of grace
and beauty.

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THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

207

There was, it is true, a fault cleaving from the first
to the task which they had thus undertaken. It was a
fault which never left it; — which planted in it germs of
dissolution and decay, such as, in due time unfolded,
should prove fatal at the last. The fault was this,
namely, that the Schoolmen started with the assump-
tion that all which the Church in their own day held
and taught, all the accretions and additions to the pure
faith of Christ >yhich in successive ages had attached
themselves to it, formed a part of the original truth
once delivered, and were as such to be justified and
defended. The Knights Errant of the medieval theol-
ogy, they were prepared to hold the lists against all
comers ; claiming for that vast complex of doctrine to
which the Church more or less was committed, that it
was in every detail defensible, and avouching them-
selves ready to defend it.

St. Anselm (b. 1033, d. 1109) is generally regarded
as father and founder of the Scholastic Theology in
the West; and rightly, so far as this tide can be
ascribed to any single man. But even he was not
without forerunners. In the first place there was a
very wonderful apparition in the ninth century of a
profound and original thinker, Scotus Erigena, whose
writings on their better side, — for there was a worse
and pantheistic, — ^anticipated much of what was most
characteristic in the Schoolmen. Lanfranc too, An-
selm's own teacher and his predecessor at Canterbury,
had used the same dialectic weapons ; but what Lan-
franc did reluctandy, driven to the use of these
weapons by Berengar's employment of them, Anselm
did of free choice, and with full consciousness of the
significance of the step which he was taking. I have

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2o8 'THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

referred already, but very briefly, to his conflict with
our Norman kings, William Rufus and Henry I., in the
matter of the Investitures ; but it is as a theologian
that we must speak of him now. " The Augustine of
the Middle Ages" Anselm has been sometimes called;
and hardly any name of honour would be too honour-
able for him. Nor is this one without its special fit-
ness ; for in him, as in Augustine, there met a singular
dialectic dexterity and subtilty of intellect, with the
profoundest humility, the most ardent piety, and the
most absolute affiance on the merits and righteousness
of Christ

" I believe that so I may understand" {Credo ut in-
telligam), this was his favourite motto, even as he
loved to fall back on the words of Isaiah, " Except ye
believe, ye shall not be established." Nor did he
reckon that this seeking to harmonize the two, namely,
faith and reason, was merely permissible to us; he
counted that it could not be left unattempted without
sin. Thus in one place he says, "As the right order
demands that we believe the deep things of the Chris-
tian faith before we presume to discuss them by rea-
son, so it appears to me a piece of negligence if, after
we are confirmed in the faith, we do not seek also to
understand what we believe." A very significant
token of a new theological era beginning is a little
work of his, in which all is characteristic, but its name
the most characteristic of all. It is called ''Cur Deus
Homo?'' or "Why did God become man?" In this
ever-memorable treatise, so small in bulk, and which
yet has affected the after-speculation of the Church in
the matter of the Atonement as no other book has
done, he does not stop short, as hitherto the positive

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THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN. 209

theology had stopt, with teaching that in some way or
other Christ's death was substitutive and accepted in
the room of ours, but goes on to seek the reason of
the fact, the inner moral necessity that, if our sins were
to be forgiven, Christ should take our nature and die
our death ; . and to show that Christ having so done,
the forgiveness followed as a necessary consequence.
The fact of the worth of Christ's sacrifice every faith-
ful member of the Church had at all times acknow-
ledged ; but what it was which gave to this sacrifice
its transcendant worth, and how the obedience of one
overweighed the disobedience of millions, all this is
here for the first time reduced to a systematic and
scientific form, and cleared of excrescences which
sometimes clung to it in the earlier Church.

But the vindication of the rational character of all
supernatural truth, if only the first approaches to it
are made froqj the right quarter, from that, namely,
of faith, the position that in the end theology will be
found the true philosophy, and philosophy the true
theology, this has dangers, as is evident, which lie
very near to it. It might resolve itself only too easily
into an almost exclusively intellectual treatment of
mysteries which should be first and chiefly the objects
of devout affections, of adoration and prayer, and
which can never, without grievous mischief to those
who occupy themselves about them, forego their char-
acter as such. Investigations safe in the hands of an
Anselm, how soon and easily might they degenerate
into something very different, where the true balance
between the activities of the intellect and those of the
heart was wanting ; where the one was overbusy, and
' the affections of the other hardly called into play or

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2IO THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

not at all And then, what intruding into things not
seen and which never can be seen, what seeking to
weigh in scales of reason that which in its nature was
imponderable by them, would follow. So fared it
here. Before long the simple faith of many was
offended. Holiest things, as it seemed to them, were
needlessly forced into debate, and in this debating
profaned.

The first to call forth such remonstrances was Peter
Abelard (b. 1079, d. 1142), a teacher of theology, im-
mensely applauded, and with all the world going after
him, in the University of Paris. Probably no person
of the MidSle Ages has awakened so lively an interest
in modern times as he has done ; there are few
known to us so well. No doubt he is a very signifi-
cant figure in the times to which he belongs ; but it is
quite possible to rate him too highly. Vain, "ignorant
of nothing in heaven or on earth save only of him-
self* (this at least is St. Bernard's description of him),
sadly wanting in moral earnestness, — for he could en-
dure all that applause as a teacher of things divine
while living in deadly sin, — he owes his reputation not
a little to his misfortunes, and to the fact that in. these
a woman of a far nobler type of character than his
own was entangled: something also to the surprise,
— 2, welcome surprise to many, — with which men
recognize in him not indeed a rationalist, but one with
a very unmistakeable vein of rationalism, a champion
of " free enquiry '* in the ages of faith. A favourite
maxim of his, "We must not believe what we have not
first understood '' {Non credmdtim nisi prius intellect
turn), reveals to us how wide the gulf was which
divided him from Anselm ; while his theology of the

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THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN, 21 1

Atonement, which begins and ends with the benevo-
lence of God, is in the same direct opposition.

Silenced, and condemned to cast into the flames
with his own hand the book of his which had offended
the most, he became before very long the rallying
point once more for all the most advanced spirits of
the age. The condemned book, slighdy altered, reap-
peared; and at lelngth St. Bernard counted that he
could not keep silence any longer. It was not as an
enemy to enquiry, or as one denying that it was man's
privilege and prerogative to know the things of God,
that he thus entered the lists. What was mainly now
in dispute was the way of this divine knowledge ;
whether man by searching could find out God ; or
whether any true knowledge of Him was noX. given to
holy and humble men of heart, the violence of prayer
rather being the only violence which profited here;
while others were more blinded than illuminated by
the light toward which they presumptuously soared.

The Church in again condemning Abelard, — for it
did condemn him (1140), and adjudged to a cloistral
seclusion which endured to his life's end. — had no in-
tention of condemning thereby the Scholastic The-
ology itself. This, so long as it kept within its own
limits, and in the main it showed no desire to trans-
gress them, was capable of doing service too essential
to allow that it should be alienated or repelled. The
extent to which it had taken possession of all Western
Europe is strikingly illustrated by the fact that there
is almost no great nationality of those times which
cannot boast some famous Schoolman of its own.
Thus Abelard, as we have seen, was a Frenchman ;
Albertus Magnus was a German, Aquinas and Bona-

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2 1 2 THE EARLIER SCHOOLMEN.

Ventura Italians, Alexander Hales and William of
Occam Englishmen, Scotus Erigena and Duns Scotus
Celts. There are occasions when to keep these na-
tionalities in mind will not be unhelpful for the better
understanding of the men and of their teaching. Such
an occasion we just have had.

I must hasten to the end. The two tendencies, the
scholastic and the mystic, which had been in implicit
opposition in St. Bernard and Abelard, arrived before
long at a thorough reconciliation, completing not ex-
cluding one another, in the illustrious school of theo-
logians who are named from the monastery of St
Victor, near Paris, of whom Hugh (b. 1097, d- ^HO
and Richard (d. 1 1 73) are the chief. These scholastic
Mystics of the twelfth century, it may be well to state
in parting, must not be confounded with another band
of German Mystics who appeared in the fourteenth
century, and of whose merits and Jaults something
must be said bye and bye. These mystic Scholastics
of whom we are treating now, felt, as has been well
said, " the influences of the time in which they lived,
so that, while by their writings and teachings they
helped to check the excessive subtlety and speculation
of the period, by keeping in view the more practical
contemplative aspects of Christianity, they were them-
selves preserved from that degenerate mysticism
which ends in a vague and feeble Pantheism because
it neglects the scientific aspects of religion and decries
all creed -statements." The later fortunes of the
Scholastic Theologj^ which are so closely bound up
with those of the Mendicant Orders that there is no
thoice but to consider the two together, I reserve for
a later Lecture.

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LECTURE XV.

THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

I SAID in my opening Lecture that he who would read
the story of the Church aright, for better and not for
worse, should, as far as might be, read it as a story of
the Wheat, and not of the Tares. Yet this after all
can only partially be done ; for indeed there are tares
everywhere ; and that field of the Lord, toward which
our eyes are now turned, abounding as it does with
the best and with the worst, will inevitably be the very
spot where the tares will be found in rankest luxuri-
ance ; — neither until the consummation of the present
Age shall these, with everything else that offends, be
removed from it All which being so, that would
assuredly be a very-one sided, and thus untruthful,
representation of things, which should* take no account
of these, should strive to conceal their existence or the
multitude of them. My Lecture to-day will have to
do with the tares.

The attempt to give in a brief compass any intel-
ligible account of the sects of the Middle Ages is one
beset with difficulties which might well-nigh drive the
most confident in himself to despair. In the first place,
if we except the Waldenses, whom I shall not include
in this Lecture, — for they deserve better than to find
themselves mixed up with such very questionable
company, — we know them almost wholly by the report

213

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214 '^^^ SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

of their adversaries, who have good reason to blacken
the character of those whom they did not count worthy,
whom often they did not suffer, to live ; and whose
memorial has for the most part perished with them. I
do not mean that it is impossible to arrive at a know-
ledge, accurate in the main, of what the various sec-
taries really held, and what was erroneously imputed
to them; but much care and caution are necessary
here. Then too, while we watch in a spirit of generous
fairness to do them right, there are also temptations
to do them more than right ; above all, in a just indig-
nation at much which Rome was doing in these ages,
we are tempted to make antagonism to her to cover a
multitude of sins. There are not wanting some who
are prepared to accept as true brethren in the faith
any who can be shown to have been in vigorous op-
position to her, as though distance from Rome was
itself a pledge of nearness to the truth. What an ex-
ample of this, pushed to an extreme, Ave have in the
persistence with which some, in the face of evidence
the most overwhelming, are still prepared to assert
that the Albigenses (of whom presently), occupied the
same doctrinal ground as the Waldenses, and were
fighting, as these were, the battle of scriptural religion.
Other difficulties beset this task which I have to-day
undertaken. Thus, consider the infinite confusion
which reigns in the mere nomenclature of the sects : —
some sects going by many names; in each several
locality known by a different one ; many sects con-
founded under a common name, applied ignorantly
and almost at random to them, — Lollard is an example
of this. In the case of those diversity is suggested,
where there was none ; in the case of these it is kept

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THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

215

out of sight, where it really existed. When, too, we
address ourselves to the names themselves, and ask
them to give up their secret and to tell us what they
mean and why they were originally imposed, — for to
know the secret of a name is always to know some-
thing, is often to know everything concerning the
bearer of the name, — in very many instances they ab-
solutely refuse to reveal from whence they are, or
what they signify, or indeed anything certain about
themselves. Take names as frequently recurring as
the following, Paulicians, Patarenes, Publicans, Picards,
Beghards, Beguines, Lollards, there is not one of them
about whose origin there has not been some dispute.

And then, too, while truth is one, error is manifold.
It is not one labyrinth, in which we have patiently to
find our way, but many ; each upon its own plan, and
each with intricate and tortuous paths of its own.
There was indeed one bond between all the sects —
namely that the dominant Church was for them a
Church utterly apostate, such as had wholly let go and
lost the faith, the mystical Babylon, the Synagogue of
Satan, and the Pope the Great Antichrist, the centre
and source of all falsehood and corruption ; that, as
they counted, not in this Church's reformation, but
only in its destruction root and branch, was there hope
for the future, or could room be made for the true
kingdom of God. They differed from the heretics of
an earlier time in that those called in question some
siilgle doctrine of the Church ; while these called in
question its whole existence. It was for them an in-
carnate lie. Not less did they differ herein from those
whom we may call the Reformers before the Reforma-
tion, of whom I hope to speak hereafter ; who did not.

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21 6 THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

refuse to recognize a Church, although one deformed
by manifold corruptions, and needing above everything
else a reformation in its head and in its members.
The writers against the sectaries were never weary of
comparing them to the foxes which Samson caught
and sent among the corn-fields. Whatever way the
faces of these might look, their tails were tied together
into a common knot (Judges xv. 4). It did not fare
otherwise, so their adversaries said, with the heretics.
Utterly discordant they might be each from the other;
looking in the most opposite directions ; but a common
enmity to the Church of God was as the knot which
tied all their tails together; in this enmity was the
bond of their union.

Again, there was this which the greater number of
the sects, but not all, had in common, being indeed the
same which we have already noted, pushed a litde
further, — namely, that they wholly ignored what we may
justly call historic Christianity. In a false spiritualism
they resolved all the main facts of our belief into alle-
gories of the Christian life ; changed its objective
realities, which have the warrant of God's Word, into
subjective fancies with no other warrant but such as
they themselves might lend them. The Sacraments, as
a matter of course, and Baptism most of all, as abiding
witnesses for God's acts as against men's imaginations,
were special objects of their hate.

Among all the sects of the Middle Ages, very far
the most important in numbers and in radical antag-
onism to the Church, were the Cathari, or The Pure,
as with characteristic sectarian assumption they styled
themselves. Albigenses they were called in Langue-
doc ; Patarenes in North Italy ; Good Men by them-

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THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 2 1 7

selves. Stretching through central Europe to Thrace
and Bulgaria, they joined hands with the Paulicians of
the East, and shared in their errors. Whether these
Cathari stood in lineal historical descent from the old
Manichaeans, or had generated a dualistic scheme of
their own, is a question hard to answer, and which has
been answered in very different ways. This much,
however, is certain, that in all essentials they agreed *
with them. They sought, like them, an explanation
for the moral riddle of the world in the opposition be-
tween matter and spirit ; completing this with that
which had always gone with it, a rejection of the Old
Testament and of the Sacraments, — a. denial of any
but a phantastic Crucifixion, of the resurrection of the
body, and of other facts of the kingdom of God,
Certain inner differences they had among themselves ;
but of these I cannot undertake to speak : nor do I
profess to understand the mighty attraction which
these doctrines, — in part Gnostic, in larger part Mani-
chaean, by the Church already proved and rejected,
and as much opposed to sound reason as to Scripture,
— exercised just at this time on the minds of so many.
Very strange is the satisfaction even for their religious
instincts and cravings which some must have found in
them ; for I suppose Baxter's estimate of the Albigen-
ses — " Manichees with some better persons mixed ''
— is in the main a true one.

The Manichaean view of all matter as essentially
impure, of the body as a mere sinful prison-house of
the soul, — the devil, as diese Cathari expressly taught,
having made the one and God the other, — ^worked
here, as it never fails to work, in two opposite direc-
tions. There were who counted that this sinful flesh

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2i8 THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

could never be punished enough, — in their excessive
and extravagant asceticism denying everything to it ;
there were those who reckohed as a point altogether
indifferent to what uses so vile a thing was turned,
and who thereupon proceeded to turn it to the vilest ;
while there wanted not others who veered from one
extreme to the opposite, and who, affecting to live
above angels, descended presently to a life below
beasts. First attracting notice in the latter half of
the eleventh century, they multiplied with extraordi-
nary rapidity, so that in many districts they were in
the next century more numerous than the Catholics.
St. Bernard, who undertook a mission among them, de-
scribes himself as having found the churches of the
Catholics without people, and the people without
priests.

As the Cathari disappear from the scene, — ^which
they begin to do toward the close of the thirteenth
century, unable to stand against the tremendous or-
ganization of Rome, and her inexorable application of
the means of repression at her command, — the Beg-
hards and Beguin'es, of whom we heard little or noth-
ing before, come to the front. These at the beginning
were free guilds or associations, the first of#pietist
men, and the second of pietist women, who, without
vows and without the Papal allowance, associated
themselves for works of piety and love. But though
these might refrain from constituting themselves into
societies hostile to Rome, it was not very long before
others found their way among them, and sought to
take possession of their name and their organization
for purposes of their own — and above all the extreme
Franciscans known by many names, as Zealots {Zela-

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THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

219

tores), Litde Brethren (Fraticelli), and Spirituals {Spirit-
uales). I must here anticipate a little, for I have not
spoken of St. Francis, and reserve the most which I
have to say about him for my next Lecture. Let me
satisfy myself with observing here that, already in his
lifetime, there had been attempts on the part of some
of his followers to relax the extreme severity of his
rule of absolute poverty; while after his death appeals
were made to Rome to sanction this relaxation. That
one Pope after another, Gregory IX, (1231), Innocent
IV. (1245), should have favoured this appeal was not
very wonderful. They must have been well pleased
to abate, though ever so litde, the enormous contrast
between the poverty of the Orders, and the wealth,
splendour, and magnificence with which they were
themselves surrounded. But the concessions to hu-
man weakness by them allowed were profoundly re-
sented by the party of rigour in the Order of St.
Francis, who saw in them the abandonment of its fun-
damental principle, and a treason done to its founder,
who for them was hardly less than a second Christ.

Litde by litde these drifted into a position of open
antagonism to the Church. All the floating prophecies
against the Papacy, — ^and the air was full of them, —
they adopted and made their own. There were
writings in highest esteem among many, apocalyptic
visions and such like, by Joachim, an Abbot in Cala-
bria, wherein he had spoken plainly of the corruptions
of the Church, and prophesied a new and better age
which was coming. These they appropriated, adding
to them others in which- no terms were kept with
Rome. She was for them the Great Babylon, doomed
to a speedy and utter destruction ; for the " Everlast-

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220 THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

ing Gospel" beheld by the Seer in the Apocalypse
(Rev. xiv. 6), a new and last revelation, and one which
should throw all that went before into the shade, was
at hand. The dispensation of the Father had closed
with the coming of Christ ; that of the Son was just
on the point of dosing ; when that of the Holy Ghost,
the Everlasting Gospel, would begin ; — the faithful in
the first age, the age of St. Peter, having been the ser-
vants of God ; and in the second, the age of St. Paul,
the sons of God ; but presently in the third, the age
of St. John, and with allusion to John xv. 1 5, to be the
friends of God. Some attempts at reconciliation, but
these unsuccessful, were made; until at last, under
John XXIL, it was war^ which could only end in the
destruction of one or the other, between them and the
Papacy. But if they fought, by aid of prophecies and
apocalypses, against a heretic Pope, for as such they
regarded John, he fought against them with the scaf-
fold, the prison, and the sword, delivering them over
to the Inquisition to be burned in heaps as often as
he could lay hands upon them ; and these the weap-
ons of his warfare proved in the end the most effec-
tual ; so that long before the end of the fourteenth
.century we cease to hear of these sectaries^ any
more.

Apiong the most noticeable but least commendable
of the medieval sects were the Brethren and Sisters
of the Free Spirit, as they called themselves; of whom
and of whose teaching we shall have more to say
when we come to speak of the German Mystics,
These made their first appearance in and about Co-
logne early in the thirteenth century. They had
emancipated themselves not merely from the yoke of

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THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 221

Rome, but from the obligations of the moral law, justi-
fying the freedom which they claimed by an appeal to
words of Scripture, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty, "-r-words which they made to cover
all their libertine doctrines and deeds. Consistent
pantheists, they denied the distinction between good
and evil. All was good, for God was good, and God
was all and in all ; as truly and as much in the sinner
sinning as in the righteous man doing righteous acts ;
as much honoured in and by the one as the other, for
He had equally willed, so far as a will could be predi-
cated of Him, the sin and the righteousness ; with all
else which follows wherf pantheism is pushed to its
legitimate and logical consequences. They reappear
as Men of Understanding {Homines IntelligenticB) in
the fifteenth century; and we recognize in their teach-
ing the exact counterpart to that of the Libertines
who made war with Calvin at Geneva. The relations
of the heresiarch Amalrich of Bena, pantheist and
mystic, to these Brethren is very interesting, but I
cannot attempt to trace it here.

It was long, as would appear, before Rome woke to
a full sense of the greatness and urgency of the dan-
ger which from these various sects threatened her on
every side ; of the need, if she would still sit as a
Queen, that she should address herself in earnest to
the meeting and overcoming it. There was no time
to lose. The North of Spain, the South of France,
Lombardy, Western Germany along the whole course
of the Rhine, the Low Countries, all these regions were
very hotbeds of the sects ; while the cities which they
haunted most were these — Lyons, Toulouse or Tolosa
(that is tota dolosa, as a monkish chronicler interprets

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222 THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

the name), Milan, Basle, Strasburg, Cologne, Brussels,
with others which might be named. It was a strange
spectacle. While the master-builders were rearing to
ever giddier heights the stupendous edifice of Papal
power, raising story upon story, an ever-increasing
multitude of obscure workers, bound together, if by
nothing else, yet by a common hatred, and with a com-
mon resolution not to leave one stone of that edifice
on another, were undermining its very foundations.
During the latter half of the twelfth century canons
which were never enforced, missions of which nothing
came, abortive Crusades, these all, following hard on
one another, were devised against an insurrection
which was indeed formidable, for it was an insurrec-
tion of the spirits of men ; but all of them proved in-
effectual alike. And now a long-continued impunity
had so emboldened the sectaries in Southern France
that they openly held at Toulouse a Council of their
own (1167); elected a Pope (he was indeed kept out
of sight, residing somewhere in remote Bulgaria) ; and
transacted other ecclesiastical affairs. With this Pope,
with missions, with a zealous propaganda, with a free-
masonry of mutual recognition, they may be said to
have challenged the Church to a conflict, certainly
were by no means content merely to be suffered to
exist.

There were inner reasons enough why the sects
should about the twelfth century have pullulated with
a freer and a wilder growth than in any preceding age.
The vast and imposing fabric which the medieval
Church had been rearing through so many centuries
was now completed, or nearly completed. But outside
that Church were innumerable souls whose spiritual

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THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 223

needs it wholly failed to satisfy ; for whom it did not
provide any spiritual food. Thus take it in one of its
nobler aspects, its Scholastic Philosophy. What satis-
faction was there in this for multitudes of the poor and
humble that were simply hungering after the bread of
life ? Or regard it again in one of its most shameful
aspects, the insatiable greed, the covetousness out of
all measure, which, scandalous anywhere, was most
scandalous in those high places where now it haunted
the most. What marvel that men should loathe the
ministrations of those, and they were many, who,
whatever sacred names they might pretend, yet
plainly showed that they worshipped Mammon as the
highest god of all ! To make Rome responsible for
all the wild extravagances, the crimes and madness of
the sects, would be palpably unjust. There is mad-
ness enough in the hearts of men, only waiting to show
itself; there is wickedness too much, only seeking ex-
cuses for its manifestation ; while yet it is impossible
to acquit her of having largely contributed to provoke
evils against which she afterwards waged war.

The first decisive token that the policy of leaving
things to drift, or of applying weak palliatives, had
come to an end was the letting loose against the
Cathari by Pope Innocent III. of a crusading army un-
der Simon de Montfort. We know, at least in out-
line, what followed. It is the darkest blot on Inno-
cent's fame; and he who was not without his compunc-
tious visitings, who could scarcely forget the words
which St. Bernard had addressed to a predecessor of
his own, " Assail them, but with the word, not with
the sword " (Aggredere eos, sed verbo, non ferro), was
himself doomed to discover how much easier it is to

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224 '^^^ SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

let loose human tigers, than to recall and cage them
again.

The political results of this which, looked at from
another point of view, >yas a struggle between North-
ern and Southern France, and the complete triumph
of the former, do not come direcdy within our sphere;
but they were so vast, and have proved so enduring,
that I cannot wholly pass them by. This Crusade of
Simon de Montfort — if we may degrade so noble a
name by applying it to so execrable an enterprise,
—changed, and changed forever, the whole aspect of
the lands south of the Loire, regions which until this
time could hardly be regarded as France at all. This
country, under princes of its own, had developed, and
was in the early part of the thirteenth century devel-
oping still further, a language, a literature, a civiliza-
tion of its own. All perished ; or where it did not
perish, was thrust back into a position of abiding in-
feriority. Northern France had won, perhaps de-
served to win, the day ; while Languedoc, — I take the
name in its largest meaning, — Provencal before, but
now defeated and with its proper national life for ever
broken, must itself become Frankish henceforward.

Notwithstanding the multitudes who, during die
twenty years over which the horrors of the Albigensian
War extended (i 209-1 229), had perished by the sword,
at the stake, by almost every form of death, it was
found, when all seemed done, that there remained not a
scanty gleaning of heretics only, but an ample harvest
which might be gathered in, if not for the garner, for
the fire. Soon, however, it was plain that, if the work
was to be consummated, a stronger and a sterner hand
was required than that of the Bishops, each in his own

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THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

225

diocese, for this. The work in their hands was car-
ried on in a manner too desultory, too intermittent, it
may have been with too many touches of remorse ;
and Pope Gregory IX., on the plea that they were
overtasked already, transferred this matter of inquisi-
tion into cases of heretical pravity to officials spe-
cially thereto named and delegated by himself (1232).
We must not suppose, that nothing of the kind had
found place already, for the rudiments of the future
Inquisition must for some time have been form-
ing ; but here we have the first regular beginnings of
this, as an organized and permanent institution of the
Church. In the rules by which these Inquisitors were
to be guided every principle of natural equity was
outraged. The accused were not to be confronted
with the accusers, were not even to know who their
accusers, were ; persons of infamous character might
be received as witnesses against them ; elaborate
schemes for the treacherous entrapping of the ac-
cused were part of the instructions with which an In-
quisitor was provided ; a large share of the goods of
the condemned were to go to the judges who con-
demned them ; the remainder, if sometimes to the Pa-
pal exchequer, very often to the temporal princes who
should carrj' out the Church's sentence; whose cupid-
ity it was sought in this way to stimulate, and whose
co-operation to reward. The guildess children of the
condemned were beggared: there cleaved to them
the lifelong note of dishonour. It was war, too, with
the dead no less than with the living ; for the digging
up and scattering the bones of Wiclif was but one
example out of many in like kind.
The machinery, so wonderful in its wickedness and

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226 THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

its craft, did not fail in its object Persecution was
successful : — as generally in the end it is, where, with
sufficient power to back it, and knowing exactly what
it intends, it carries this through with a ruthless and
relentless persistency. By the middle of the fourteenth
century there were probably few Albigenses more ; or
if single scattered heretics were still not uncommon,
the more important of the organized schismatical com-
munities had been effectually broken up. Their chiefs
had perished. Of the rank and file some had con-
formed ; others had found refuge and concealment in
societies not so directly under the Church's ban ;
whole troops had shared in a common doom with
their leaders; and thus in one way or another the
peril of such a vast and successful revolt as at one
time seemed imminent had passed away.

So scanty henceforth, scanty at least by comparison,
the harvest of heretics in these quarters seemed likely
to prove, that the Inquisitors must for a while have
feared lest their occupation was gone. But this was
not so. They were able before long to develop a new
activity in Spain, and one perhaps bloodier than any
which had gone before. In the latter half of the
fifteenth century the Inquisition found its main occupa-
tion in the burning of Jews ; Torquemada alone send-
ing to the stake some eight or nine thousand. These,
the descendants of such as had been baptized by force
(1391), were accused of still retaining and practising
in secret the rites of their Jewish faith. By aid of such
executions the Holy Office was able to keep its ma-
chinery in order and its hand in practice ; and thus
neither was wanting to its work, when in the sixteenth
century the Reformation in Spain yielded to it, if not

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THE SECTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

227

as numerous, yet a far nobler band of victims than any
which, with perfidious words of mercy on its lips, it
had in earlier times delivered to the secular arm, and
to a death the cruellest which could be devised.

Of all the bodies which thus in the Middle Ages
joined hands in a revolt against the authority of Rome,
and shared in a common hostility to her, the Wal-
denses, weak in numbers as compared with so many
of the others, alone survived to greet the dawn of a
better day. One would not willingly utter a single
word which even malice could pervert into an apology
for the persecutors ; yet allegiance to the truth com-
pels to say that the Waldenses alone survived, be-
cause, resting on a Scriptural foundation^ they alone
were worthy to survive. That modey group of sects
whereof you have just been hearing carried one and
all in their own bosom the seeds of their own destruc-
tion. Under no conceivable circumstances could they
have wrought any true deliverance for the suffering
Church of God ; for it is only the truth, and this truth
they had not, which can make men free indeed. What
the triumphs of Islam were in the East, such would
have been the triumph of any one of these sects in the
West No strength of indignation against the means
and the weapons with which the battie against them
was fought and won, should prevent us from acknow-
ledging this.

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LECTURE XVI.

THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

An age, in so many ways creative as was the thir-
teenth century, could scarcely remain barren in new
associations for meeting the more urgent spiritual ne-
cessities of the time. It is true that during the last
two centuries the number of religious Orders had in-
creased so immensely that in the Fourth Lateran
Council a further multiplication of such Orders was
prohibited. Any one who would fain, as it was then
called, enter a religion, must make his choice among
the Orders already existing. Circumstances, however,
are stronger than men and the resolves of men ; and
Innocent III., himself the author of this decree, sanc-
tioned two new Orders which, almost simultaneously
founded, were destined before long to cast into the
shade all the earlier, and to exercise an influence far
greater than they in their palmiest days had ever
.known.

It might have seemed that no new religious excite-
ment was possible, that every combination of the ex-
isting elements of monasticism had been tried and ex-
hausted, that all which the most ingenious asceticism
could imagine had been pushed to the furthest possi-
ble limits. But it is the privilege of genius tcT evoke
a new creation, where to common eyes all appears
barren and worn out A new idea found its utterance
228

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 229

in the Mendicant Orders. Hitherto the monk, in his
ideal perfection, had been one who, withdrawing from
the world, had sought in prayer, penitence, and self-
mortification, to set forward the salvation of his own
soul ; now he should be one who in labours of self-de-
nying love, in dispensing the Word of life, should
seek the salvation of others. Hitherto he had fled
from the world, as one who, in conflict with it, must
inevitably be worsted; now he should make war upon
the world and overcome it; — nothing doubting that
in seeking the salvation of others he should best work
out his own.

Dominic Guzman (b. 11 70, d. 1221) was a Spanish
priest, of a noble Castilian name. Having accompa-
nied his Bishop on a preaching mission in the South
of France for the conversion of the anti-Catholic sects
which were swarming there, he became aware of the
imminent danger which threatened the Papacy from
the widespread revolt of men's spirits. Nor was he
less impressed by the unfitness of the secular or paro-
chial Clergy to contend with spiritual weapons against ^
the sectaries ; by the ignorance and sloth of the lower
Clergy, the worldly splendour of the higher ; — this all
contrasting most unfavourably with the simplicity in life
of their adversaries, their diligence and zeal. He saw,
too, how little help was to be gotten from the older
monastic Orders. It was an aggressive Order, one
that should boldly take up the challenge which the sec-
taries had thrown down, that the crisis demanded.
Such an Order he was resolved his Preaching
Brothers — the name expresses the central idea for the
carrying out of which they existed, — should be ; de-
voting themselves to the preaching of the Word, to

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230

THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

the spiritual oversight of the sheep everywhere scat-
tered abroad, and, with this, to the repression and ex-
tirpation of all heresies. This proposed extirpation of
all heresies, in itself a most commendable work, was
before long exchanged, by a change only too easy, for
the extirpation of all heretics, truly or falsely so called ;
a task in which the Dominicans — Domini canes, or the
Lord's watch-dogs, as they loved to be called, —
obtained a bad eminence ; for whether they were or
were not the original founders of the Inquisition, there
cannot be a doubt that in after years the principal
working of it was in their hands.

We must here make a distinction between Domi-
nic and the Dominicans. When Dominic is charged
with having followed in the wake of Simon de
Montfort's crusading armies, which succeeded the more
peaceful. mission in which he himself had borne a part,
when he is accused of approving, at least by his
presence, the hideous cruelties and still more hideous
perfidies which marked that war, or, worse than this,
with having gleaned for the Inquisitor's fire what had
been spared (where anything was spared), by the
crusader's sword, it is mere justice to say that there is
no contemporary evidence whatever to bear out these
accusations. Dean Milman does not scruple to say,
"his title of founder of the Inquisition belongs to
legend not to history."

The Albigensian Horror began in 1 209. It was not
till its first fury had spent itself that he could hope to
effect much in that line which he had already marked
out as his own : but in 1 21 5 he found his way to Rome.
His projected Order did not find much favour at the
beginning with Innocent III,, who had no mind so soon

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

231

to go back from his own decree, and who thought that
this new earnestness might very well fit itself into one
of the already existing moulds. But after a while
other counsels prevailed. The Pope, who had seen in
a vision (for so runs the legend) the tottering wall of
the Lateran Basilica sustained by a Spaniard and an
Italian, and who now beheld in . Dominic one who
might make one-half of that vision good, overcame his
hesitation and gave the Papal allowance to the new
Order. Honorius III. in the year following more for-
mally ratified what Innocent had done ; and bestowed
on it the tide of the Fratres Prcedicatores, which it had
not hitherto in any authoritative instrument obtained.
The new Society did not mightily take hold of men's
hearts and imaginations at the first. For this it was
necessary that it should adopt the rule of absolute
poverty, which there cannot be a doubt that it bor-
rowed from the Franciscans. It was this adoption,
some five years after the foundation of the Order
(1220), which first secured for it the wondrous future
that was in store for it, and enabled it to run a not
unequal race with that other Order, at once its rival
and its peer. At this same time this rule of absolute
poverty, which was of the essence of the Franciscan
Order, was only the accident of the Dominican. The
extinction of heresy was the end which Dominic pro-
posed to himself; the remmciation of all worldly
wealth was only a means for the better attaining of
this end.

A man of a will which, itself indomitable, was mighty
to subdue the wills of others, of a strong practical turn,
of wonderful sagacity to read the signs of the times,
with absolute singleness of aim devoted to the interests

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232 THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

of that Church beside which he could not conceive any
other, Dominic was yet wanting in many of those
traits which so much attract us in the character of St
Francis. Even those who exalt him the most, and
those who knew him the nearest, sufifer this to be seen.
"Austere" is the epithet which in a Papal Bull is ap-
plied to him ; while a line of Dante's about him, "Good
to his friends, and dreadful to his foes," may be taken
for praise or blame, or for something made up of both,
as we will.

Francis Bernardone (b. 1182, d. 1226), called of
Assisi, was the son of a prosperous merchant in that
little Umbrian town, which the traveller, journeying to
Rome and having just left Perugia behind him, may
see from the railway a few miles distant to the left,
nestled upon the lower slopes of the Apennines.
Whatever may have been the vanities of his gay and
brilliant youth, — and by vanities I imply no more than
I say, — he was early taken hold of by the power of
God's Word. He had already broken with the world,
though he had not yet discovered what his wider mis-
sion should be; when one day hearing the Gospel
read which told of the sending forth of the Twelve
Apostles without scrip or staff or shoes or purse, he
exclaimed, "Here is what I wanted;" and, without
prolonging the time, he at once proceeded to fashion
his life after this Apostolic pattern. Poverty, as Dante
tells us, which had now been a widow for eleven hun-
dred years, was the bride to whom he was espoused,
and from whom he was resolved that nothing should
divorce him. There were indeed Orders already ex-
isting of which poverty was the rule ; but their poverty

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233

was more or less illusory. The Order, as such, might
be rich, and in its corporate capacity might possess
houses and lands and money; it was only *' peculiarity,"
as it was called, separate possession by individual
members, which was renounced. But Francis aimed
higher. He and his should be mendicants, beggars,
that is, of their daily bread, having nothing in this
world which they could call their own, however they
might possess all things in God.

The men of his city had been already perplexed
whether to admire or to mock, to count him a saint or
a fool ; and certainly there did not want eccentric ele-
ments in his character, a fine madness; which might
for a season suggest these doubts. They were now
still more perplexed. But it was not long before the
might of self-denying and self-offering love put all
mockers and gainsayers to silence. And then there
gathered to him one and another, and so a little com-
pany, whom 'he bade go forth, east, and west, and
north, and south, to preach the Gospel to the poor.
For, indeed, intense sympathy with the poor, a seeing
and a serving of Christ in his suffering members, a
craving to be himself poorest of the poor, not stoop-
ing to their aid as from a superior height, but himself
tasting the very worst of their lot, — this was the
master-passion of his soul. Had not his Lord said, " 1
am come to send fire on the earth ? '* even the fire, as
he rightly understood it, of divine love ; and this love,
judge what we may of the idea on which his Order
rested, has perhaps never burned brighter in human
heart than in his. In the circle of that love the whole
creation, animate and inanimate, was included. The
sun was his brother, the moon his sister ; doves ate

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234 ^^^ MENDICANT ORDERS.

out of his hand; lay in his bosom. A poet, "a Minne-
singer of the divine love," he has bequeathed to us a
hymn in the Vulgar tongue, which, with all its imper-
fection of form (for indeed Italian poetry and, we may
add, Italian language were hardly yet born), is worthy
of all admiration. Nor is it without its significance
that ta two of his early scholars we are probably in-
debted for two world-famous hymns,— one the most
solemn, the other the most pathetic, in the whole circle
of Latin hymnology, — the Dies Irce and the Stabat
Mater.

What remains of his life must be very briefly told.
He too found his way to Rome in 121 5, the year of
the Fourth Lateran Council. Whether he and Domi-
nic there met is doubtful. The account of the friendly
counsel which at Rome they took together, the grace-
ful story of St. Dominic celebrating, with St. Francis
as serving Deacon, all this has no contemporary evi-
dence to support it ; and may very possibly have been
all invented with a view to allaying the jealousy
between the Orders, by making it plain that no jeal-
ousy existed between their founders. Other points
are more certain, — as that Innocent III. was at first
little disposed to extend any countenance to the beg-
garly suppliant; that in his case as in Dominic there
was something very like a repulse at the outset. On
second thoughts, however, he gave allowance to
Francis and to his rule ; being too sagacious a ruler
to commit the fault which the heads of our English
Church committed when they repelled and refused to
enlist in the Church's service the zeal of Wesley and
of his followers. The allowance was, indeed, only
verbal ; for the Pope, no doubt, preferred to *vait and

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 235

see what would come of this new enthusiasm before
further committing himself to it Formal approbation
Francis did not obtain till after Innocent's death.
With such allowance as he had gotten he returned in
triumph to Assisi. And now the little mustard seed
which he had planted grew and grew, though he was
not to see it as the great tree overshadowing the
whole of Western Christendom, for, worn out with
toil and travail and austerities, he expired at the early
age of forty-four (1226).

The rapidity with which the two Orders spread was
marvellous ; the Franciscan, which was the more dem-
ocratic, and recruited itself from the ranks of the peo-
ple, spreading still faster than the Dominican, which
had always a certain aristocratic element about it, so
that almost from the outset the direction of the upper
classes fell into its hands. Thus not more than two
and twenty years after the death of Francis his Or-
der numbered 8,000 religious houses. Many causes
wrought together for this. The Mendicants embodied
the idea of the Evangelical life, as in those ages con-
ceived, more completely than any of the preceding
Orders had done. Living upon alms, and finding a
table everywhere spread for them, they did not re-
quire, as the others did, permanent landed endowments
before they could found their houses. They basked
moreover in the peculiar favour not of the people only,
Iput of the Popes, who soon recognized in them their
most faithful militia. An extent, a number of mem-
bers, an influence which it had taken older Orders two
or three hundred years to acquire, they acquired and
surpassed in twenty or thirty. Nor, however swift
their subsequent declension may have been, is it to be

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236 THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

denied that in their earliest and best days a mighty
work of revival was wrought by them throughout
western Christendom. One might compare it in many
respects to the Methodist revival in England during
the last century, only that it was on a vaster scale and
over a far wider area. It is true that it was not always
" the siacere milk of the word " with which souls were
fed ; but whatever admixture of error and superstition
there may have been, it was much for multitudes, for-
gotten so long, that there should be any who cared for
their souls. Bishop GrostSte, intolerant of monks as
he was, could greet the first coming of the friars into
England with words like these, "The people that
walked in darkness have seen a great light"

What marvel if the Church, and the world which in
those ages was inextricably mixed up with the Church,
were persuaded that in Holy Scripture itself there
must be types and prophecies of the workers of these
wonders ; that some saw in them " the two anointed
ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth "
(Zech. iv.. 11-14) ; that they were hailed as the two
forerunners of Christ's Second Coming, who should go
before Him in the spirit and power of Enoch and
Elijah ; each, indeed, having his own peculiar glory ;
the one to find his place in the Order of the Seraphim,
who love most ; the other in that of the Cherubim,
who know most ; Francis, so Dante describes him, an
Ardour, inflaming the world with the fire of diving
love ; Dominic a Splendour, causing the light of the
glory of God to shine over all the earth ? Such was the
language which was presently spoken about them ;
already in their lifetime there had gathered round them
a whole world of legend and of wonder.

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS,

But this immense success which waited on the
Orders in their early days aroused other feeh'ngs be-
sides those of admiration. It is easy to imagine the in-
tense jealousy with which the Mendicants, their rapid
growth, the special favour in so many quarters vouch-
safed them, were regarded ; and the many by whom
this jealousy was entertained. There was first the
jealousy of the older monastic foundations, beaten on
their own ground and now hopelessly distanced by
their younger competitors. There was the jealousy
of the Universities; above all of the University of
Paris, which saw with indignation one and presendy
more of its principal chairs of instruction invaded and
occupied by these upstart intruders. There was the
jealousy of the Bishops, who beheld their authority
set at nought; the Mendicants, among other privi-
leges bestowed upon them, being permitted to hold
directly from the Pope, they and their houses owning
but a shadow of allegiance to the Bishop in whose
diocese they were. But above all, there was the jeal-
ousy of the parochial Clergy. Whatever their faults
may have been, the parochial system itself was as all-
important to the Church then as at the present day.
It was now threatened with dissolution. The monks
had not been permitted to celebrate, except within
their own walls, the divine offices. But this with
other privileges, as to baptize, to hear confessions, to
administer extreme unction, to bury in their own
churches, — this last permission a very mine of wealth
— ^were all accorded to these favoured friars, who
everywhere exercised their intrusive ministrations with
no license obtained from the Bishop, no leave granted
by the parish priest They are accused of every-

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238 THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

where seeking to undermine the respect of the people
for their appointed guides ; bidding them to come
to those who knew the secrets of spiritual direc-
tion, who were not dumb dogs, blind guides, as others
were. And multitudes came; being only too glad
to confess their sins to the wandering friar whom
they never had seen before, whom perhaps they never
should see again; so sparing themselves the shame of
a confession to their own Clergy ; not to say that as a
rule, if we may believe Chaucer's word about him,
"He was an easy man to give penance." The mischief
reached such a height that Pope Innocent IV., in 1254,
made some feeble efforts to revoke or limit these
special privileges which his predecessors had lavished
on their new favourites with so prodigal a hand. The
Orders, however, had grown too strong, and suc-
ceeded in retaining all or nearly all which had been
once conceded to them.

• Praised, exalted, glorified at the beginning, it was
not long before an almost universal chorus of indig-
nant complaint rose up against them. They were
meant to be patterns of Evangelical humility, — this
stamping itself on their dress, their discipline, on the
very names which they bore. But it very soon was
evident that the secret of humility does not lie in call-
ing ourselves by humble names. One may call him-
self " Servant of the servants of God," and yet lord it
over his fellow-servants with an arrogance unparal-
leled. So these might name themselves Minors, even
as some, counting this too little, claimed to be Minims,
and some Postremists, without for all this being a whit
the humbler ; nay, rather, being only the pr'ouder on
the strength of this ostentatious humility. Upon every

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239

, side were heard complaints of their intolerable pride,
of their arrogant contempt for all but themselves.

Nor did it fare better with the schemes of compul-
sory poverty, which were to bring those who adopted
them into a closer imitation of Him who made Him-
self so poor for us. None of those schemes will ever
of themselves give us detachment from the creature,
that poverty of spirit to which alone a blessedness is
linked : not to say that, while Francis was still alive,
evasions of the strictness of his rule forbidding even
a corporate possession of worldly goods, began to
find favour with many, and much more after his death.
Poverty was the bride to which he remained faithful
to the end; but it was a bride from whom his fol-
lowers, or a large part of them, were only anxious to
be divorced. They might not — so it was sought to
interpret his rule — possess anything in fee ; but they
might enjoy th^ usufruct of whatever lands, houses,
and other worldly goods the piety of the faithful be-
stowed upon them, the absolute ownership being
vested in the Pope. The propterty thus formally
made over to the Pope, but of which he was only the
trustee, grew to such a vast amount, that ere long
these Orders united the boast of being the poorest,
with the reality of being the richest. Orders in Chris-
tendom! Conscious as they must have been of this
evasion of their vow, — an evasion so unworthy that at
last John XXII. refused to be any longer a part to it, —
it is strange to find this vaunt of their being the only

. genuine followers of Apostolic poverty continually in
their mouths. The monks of the older foundations
might be " possessioners " — for this was the invidious
term which they applied to them — ^but not they, who

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240 THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

had no possessions of their own. How soon the.
savour had departed, how swift the degeneration had
been, we may gather from Chaucer, who is nowhere
wittier, but alas! nowhere coarser, than in his un-
savoury tale, of which a mendicant friar is the hero.
This story, it is true, is put into the mouth of a su'm-
moner, an officer of the Bishop's court, to whom a
begging friar must have been poison ; yet, making
every allowance, it reveals an abyss of contempt into
which the unworthier members of these Orders had
fallen, such as left almost no accusation too mean or
too hateful to be brought against them.

And other matter of scandal and offence more than
enough they afforded. Having triumphed over the
older Orders, and thrust Benedictine and Clugnian and
Cistercian, all whom men hitherto had honored the
most, into the shade, they presently turned their arms
against one another, each Society seeking to glorify
itself in the surpassing glory of its founder. Already
in the lifetime of these this unseemly rivalry between
their several followers had begun, a rivalry which
Dante covertly rebukes, when he puts the praises of
St. Francis in the mouth of the greatest Dominican,
and those of St. Dominic in that of a scarcely less
illustrious Franciscan. But in such a pitting of found-
ers one against the other, the Franciscans had mani-
festly the advantage. The first idea of a Mendicant
Order belonged to their chief ; all others, Dominicans,
Carmelites, Augustinian-Eremites, did but follow his
lead. Then, too, divine favours were his, so his follow-
ers averred, which were unique. Who but he could
say with St. Paul, " I bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus?"

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 241

Let a word or two here find place on these marks or
wounds, these stigmata in his hands, his feet^ his side,
to which they thus appealed. Assuming their exist-
ence as sufficiendy proved by contemporary evidence,
I can only reject the explanation which sees in them
special marks of divine favour, imprinted on his body
to bring him into closer conformity with his crucified
Lord ; while on the other hand I dismiss, with scorn
the suggestion that they were marks artificially and
fraudfuUy brought about by the Saint himself, for his
own greater glorification, with or without the assist-
ance or connivance of others. There is no a priori
ground for refusing credit to the statements of those
who testified that they had seen these wound-prints
and handled them. A like phenomenon has since re-
peated itself so often, there have been so many analo-
gous cases verified beyond all doubt, some eighty at
the least, by no means all in the Roman Catholic
Church, that it is idle to urge a physical impossibility.
The matter after all is not so unintelligible. We
know something now of the reactive power of the
spirit, which is the stronger, in moulding and fashion-
ing the flesh, which is the weaker, — enough to bring
all which here looks so inexplicable within the sphere
of things natural. Figure to yourselves a man with a
temperament so impressible, of an organization so
delicate, penetrated through and through with the
anguish of his Lord's sufferings, passionately and con-
tinually dwelling on the circumstances of his crucifix-
ion, yearning, so to speak, to be crucified with Him.
For myself when I so do, I can quite understand how
all this uttered itself in these visible tokens ; and I am
as sure that there was no miracle as I am that there

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242

THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

was no fraud. But if this " prerogative of the wounds"
(for so it was called) was his and his only, St Domi-
nic had his prerogatives as well. This theme, how-
ever, I shall willingly quit ; and you too will gladly
learn that these rivalries, since such they were to be,
after a while were transferred to nobler fields ; and, in
times when the Orders retained but faint traces of that
which was originally their distinctive feature, the ablest
sons of the one and of the other, — such as a Thomas
Aquinas and a Duns Scotus, — contended in rival
chairs of theology and philosophy which of them
should rule the thought, and guide the intellect of
Christendom. But of this long, and in many aspects
honourable rivalry I hope to speak bye and bye. Here
I must be content to express the astonishment with
which I read in Lacordaire's Life of St Dominic, that
" no breath of jealousy has ever sullied the pure
crystal of the friendship which has existed between
the Orders for now six hundred years."

A few words in conclusion. What shall we say to
these things? That whole work of the founders of
these two Orders, shall we count it a fantastic tissue,
shot through with threads of superstition and error, a
piece of medieval extravagance, absurd from the be-
ginning, and only meeting the failure which it de-
served ? Shall we say of St. Francis, with an histor-
ian of the last century, that the kindest thing to think
about him is that he was crazy ? This would not be a
profitable attitude of mind and heart in which to re-
gard that story of high self-sacrifice which you just
have heard. Shall we say on the other hand that
here was a wondrous outcome of the spirit of Christ,
and that, if love had not grown cold, we should behold

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 243

similar manifestations at this day? As little can I
contemplate this as a just and wholesome conclusion
to draw from this history.

But to answer that question aright, I would claim
first to distinguish between the man and his work.
The work, however marvellous the success which at-
tended it at the first, I believe to have had seeds of
failure sown in it from the beginning. The disciples
of St Francis, — for he was in fact the fatlier of both
Orders so far as they were Mendicant, — were to live
upon the alms of the faithful. This sounds very well ;
but look at it a little closer, and what does it mean ?
Seeing that he did not invite his followers to a delibe-
rate suicide, what was this but saying that they should
live not upon their own labour, but upon the labour of
other people ; that instead of working for themselves,
others should work for them ? Now, doubdess, there
are those who may lawfully leave to others the supply
of their bodily necessities, in a just confidence that
they give back to the world in another shape many
times more in return ; nay further, that they may not
merely accept, but may claim this supply, with no in-
jury thereby done to their spiritual life. St. Paul was
such a one, though he very sparingly made use of
this liberty ; and Francis himself, and many with gifts
far inferior to his, might do the same. But think of
men gathered by thousands and tens of thousands,
and after the first fine enthusiasm had passed away,
often with no inward vocation, not a few seeking to
escape the primeval law — " In the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread" — and how was this scheme of
sustentation likely to work ? We know how it did
work, what a byword the begging friar ere long be-

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS,

came for all his ignoble arts, his shameless asking, his
importunity which would take no refusal, his creeping
into houses, " Sir Penetransdomos " as he was early
called (with allusion, no doubt, to 2 Tim. iii. 6, Vulg.),
his wheedling of silly women, his having of rich men's
persons in admiration because of advantage, his
watchings by wealthy death-beds, so to secure a legacy
to his house, his promising of spiritual benefits which
often he must have known were not his to grant, in
exchange for temporal gifts. Bonaventura, himself
the head of the order, and writing not fifty years after
Francis' death, does not scruple to say that already in
his time the sight of a begging friar in the distance was
more dreaded than that of a robber.

But this consecration of " able beggary," as Wiclif
indignantly calls it, besides working in this way for the
moral vulgarizing of those who practised it, made itself
injuriously felt in circles wider still, helped to cast a
general slight upon honourable labour. How could it
do otherwise, when they who were counted to have
chosen the highest life, not merely withdrew them-
selves from toil, but gloried in this withdrawal as being
a part of that perfection, or a means to that perfection,
which they aimed at ? Nothing strikes one in South
Italy more painfully than the utter want of self-respect
evinced in this matter by the whole poorer population.
Man, woman, and child, whatever other occupation
they may follow, have superadded that of beggar,
which they exercise with no sort of shame, and as the
most natural thing in the world. Little as the sublime
Mendicant of Assisi foresaw or intended this, he did
much to bequeath to Italy the eating sore of an almost
universal mendicancy ; made it for multitudes impos-

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THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 245

sible to understand the blessed links which link to-
gether the two utterances of the Psalmist: "Thou
shalt eat the labours of thine hands ;" and, " O well is
thee, and happy shalt thou be!" And after all he
struck no mortal blow at the sin of covetousness.
Not money, but " the love of money," St. Paul tells
us, " is the root of all evil." That he struck no mor-
tal blow at this even among his own followers, we
saw just now. Already during his life, still more
after his death, one pitiful evasion of the strictness
of his rule was devised and then another ; while such
as were resolved to abide by the rigour of it de-
spite of Papal decisions in favour of laxity (see p.
219), were dealt with as heretics, not a few of
them expiating their fidelity to their master's rule at
the stake.

On the idea by aid of which he hoped to regenerate
the Church I need not say more. So far as he did
effect anything considerable here, it was the man and
not the rule that wrought the mighty works. For him,
let him have fallen into what mistakes he may, he must
always remain one of the most wonderful figures which
the wonderful story of the life of Christ in his mem-
bers presents. For him, who can doubt that he did
well, when, bidden by an inward voice to leave all for
the sake of Christ and Christ's poor, he was not dis-
obedient to that voice, but chose what presented itself
to him as the closest possible conformity to the life
of his crucified Lord ? It is these, these elect souls,
to whatever age and communion they may have be-
longed, let there have cleaved to them what extrav-
agancies there may, — who starde the world and
the Church from those dreams of careless ease and

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246 THE MENDICANT ORDERS.

indulgence into which the one is quite as ready to
fall as the other ; it is these, of whom but to read
or hear, upbraids our selfish lives and rebukes our
lukewarm sympathies for the suffering members of
Christ

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LECTURE XVII.

THE WALDENSES.

When God has a special work for any people to do,
He often makes their outward conditions such as shall
be the most favourable for their doing it There is a
real correspondence between them, on the one side,
and their appointed home, the bounds of their local
habitation, on the other.. It was thus with the Jews.
Till the fulness of time came, they were to be "a
people dwelling alone and not reckoned among the
nations ;" and Palestine, as it would be easy to show,
was exactly the land to keep them thus apart. But
while thus the Jewish points of contact with the rest of
the world were few, Greece, with quite another mission,
had points of contact innumerable. All shore and
harbour, Greece was everywhere accessible, every-
where invited and facilitated approach. Not other-
wise the principal seats of the Waldenses had their
fitness too. It is in mountainous districts, in remote
valleys, such as those where they dwelt, that men cling
the longest to old traditions, customs, faiths, — are least
affected by the revolutions which are altering the gene-
ral face of the world ; while at the same time these
mountains and valleys are not fastnesses which shut
up their dwellers so strictly that they can neither in-
fluence others nor be influenced by them.

Certainly they were not so in tiiis case. We must

247

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248 THE WALDENSES.

not think of the Waldenses as rigidly confined to their
narrow Alpine haunts. Geographically divided into
two groups, according as they dwelt on the Italian or
the French slopes of the Alps, their earliest home was
on the French side, in Dauphiny and Provence, as
their oldest name " Poor Men of Lyons," sufficiently
attests. But they were numerous in North Italy as
well ; and far more widely scattered over the whole
of central Europe than their present dwelling place
and numbers would at all suggest. They had congre-
gations in Florence, in Genoa, in Venice, above all in
Milan ; there were Waldensian communities as far
south as Calabria ; they were not unknown in Arra-
gon ; still less in Switzerland ; at a later day they
found their way to Bohemia, and joined hands with
the Hussites there.

From the language which many at this day hold,
one might be tempted to suppose that for several cen-
turies, during a large portion of the Middle Ages, the
' true Church of Christ had retreated out of the open
sight of men, and was nowhere to be traced except in
the litde communities which I speak of. Milton him-
self has not hesitated to claim for them the honour
which belongs to those

" who kept the truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones.**

With the fullest admission of the many grievous
corruptions which during a long period deformed the
Catholic Church, with a hearty acknowledgment no
less of what we owe to these Alpine witnesses, we
may still decline to accept this statement concerning
the objects of our fathers' worship* or to read the past

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THE WALDENSES.

249

of the Church as in such statements it is implicitly
proposed to read it.

For myself let me at the outset express my convic-
tion that the whole attempt to ascribe to the Wal-
denses an earlier date than the latter half of the
twelfth century, to throw back their origin some two
hundred years, or sometimes much more than this,
even to the times of Claudius of Turin (d. 839), is one
which will not stand the test of historical criticism ;
while the endeavour to vindicate for them this remote
antiquity has introduced infinite confusion into their
whole history. The date of Waldo, who, as. I cannot
doubt, is rightly recognized as their founder, we cer-
tainly know. When it is sought to get rid of their rela-
tion to him as embodied in the very name which they
bear, and to change this name into Vallenses, the Men
of the Valleys or the Dalesmen, it is a transformation
which has no likelihood, philological or historic to
recommend it. It was urged for long that a most im-
portant document of their own, The Noble Lesson (of
which more anon), claimed a date for itself which
would compel us to recognize the existence of Wal-
denses before Waldo, and thus earlier than the latter
half of the twelfth century ; but no one sufficiendy
acquainted with the facts concerning this document,
as they are now known, would affirm as much any
longer.

Yet, with all this, our refusal to admit the remoter
ancestry which is sometimes claimed for 'the Wal-
denses, must not be construed as a denial of all con-
nexion between them and the remonstrants of an
earlier date. The medieval Church System, so far as it
was a departure from Apostolical simplicity, fashioned

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250

THE WALDENSES.

itself under continual protests ; some of these utterly
insane, and encountering departures from Scripture
in one direction by far wilder departures in another ;
but others having Scripture and the unbroken tradi-
tion of the Church from the times of the Aposdes for
their warrant. Now, if any choose to call some early
protesters of this better kind the ancestors of the
Waldenses, there is no reason why they should not
use this language. Agobard (d. 841) was an ances-
tor ; his contemporary, Claudius of Turin, was an an-
cestor ; but they were ancestors only in as much as
they wrought in the same direction and were animated
by the same spirit. When more is claimed for them,
we have no choice but to say that no historic con-
nexion between these and those can be traced ; that a
vast gulf of centuries, not historically bridged over,
separates them from one another.

Peter Waldo, — for we will not withhold from him
this Christian name, although there is no authority for
it anterior to the beginning of the fifteenth century, —
was a rich citizen and merchant of Lyons. Not satis-
fied with those scanty portions of Scripture doled out
to the laity in divine services, and yearning above all
for a larger knowledge of the Gospels, he obtained
from two friends among the priesthood a copy of these
last and of some other portions of Scripture translated
into the Romance language, a collection also of say-
ings from the Fathers. The whole movement rq-
mained to the end true to this its first motiv? — ^the
desire namely for a fuller acquaintance with the Word
of God. That Word he now resolved to make the
rule of his life. But how should conformity to this
rule be best attained ? Some may be slow to receive

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THE WALDENSES.

251

it, but there can, I think, be no manner of doubt that
Waldo started very much from the same starting-point
as Francis of Assisi : — that the most Apostolic life, and
most nearly conformed to the pattern which the Saviour
left, was one of absolute renunciation of all worldly
possessions. He too, as a first step, sells all that he
has, and bestows it upon the poor. In the name which
he adopts for himself and for the companions whom he
presently associates with him, the same fact of a volun-
tary poverty, as that which above all they should em-
body in their lives, speaks out On this side of the
Alps they are Poor Men of Lyons ; on the Italian Poor
Men of Lombardy.

Before long it was brought home to him that this
Apostolic life was very incomplete, if it was not a life
of active service; that the knowledge of the Scriptures
which he and those associated with him had obtained,
they were bound also to impart. And now he and his
began to preach in the streets of Lyons, to find their
way into houses, to itinerate the country round. Waldo
had no intention herein of putting himself in opposi-
tion to the Church, of being a Reformer in any other
sense than St. Francis or St. Bernard was a Reformer,
a quickener, that is, and reviver of the Church's
spiritual life. His protest was against practical mis-
chiefs, against negligences and omissions on the part
of those who should have taught the people, and did
not Doctrinal protest at this time there was none.

But for Rome all forms of religious earnestness
were suspicious which did not spring directly from
herself. A true instinct told her that such a com-
munity as was projected, growing out of the bosom
of the laity, drawing its spiritual life so directly from

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252 THE WALDENSES.

Holy Scripture, could not in the long run work other-
wise than unfavourably for her; and in 1178 the Arch-
bishop of Lyons forbade their preaching or expound-
ing any more. Such as did not submit had no choice
but to quit Lyons, and betake themselves elsewhere.
And thus it came to pass that not the city, already so
illustrious in ecclesiastical story, where Irenaeus taught
aud Blandina suffered, — not the city of Agobard, — the
same which had already given to this company of later
dissidents their name, — ^but the Alpine mountains must
shelter these outcasts, and in turn be made famous by
their presence.

But even after this prohibition Waldo did not at
once renounce the hope that he might be permitted
to found a religious guild within the Church. Depu-
ties of his with a copy of his translation of Scripture,
and with the rule of his proposed Order, found their
way to Rome, humbly seeking of Pope Alexander III.
his sanction and allowance. An English Archdeacon,
Walter Mapes, who has left behind him some very
clever, but not always very edifying, poems in the
rhymed Latin of his age, — if indeed these are his, — ^was
present at the Pa*pal Court at the time; and was one
of a Board who should make proof of wh^t these men
taught, and report to the Pope. The Archdeacon re-
lates with much glee how he prepared a theological
pitfall for them, — one, it must be owned, sufficiendy
harmless in character, — into which, amid the laughter
of many present, these simple men, whose own theol-
ogy was rather of the Bible than of the Schools, did
not fail at once to fall. Whether this at all affected
the issue I know not ; but the Pope, counting them ig-
norant and unlettered, as no doubt in one sense they

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THE WALDENSES.

253

were, dismissed them with a refusal which would have
condemned to absolute silence. Unable to obtain the
Papal authorization they now went forward without it.
Thus, running before they were sent, as Pope Lucius
III. lays, to their charge, they were at the Council of
Verona (11 83) by him put under the Church's ban.
But they could cite Scripture ; and urging words of
St James, *^To him that knoweth to do good, and
doeth it not, to him it is sin," they did not desist

After a while Innocent III. saw the mistake which
his predecessor had committed. Under his auspices
a Society was founded (1209), embodying as much of
Waldo's original intention as wa*s consistent with due
subordination to the interests of Rome. It was his
hope to absorb into this " Order of Poor Catholics "
those who were now in danger of being estranged from
the Church for ever. But the new Order made no
way, took no root. Even so potent a charmer as the
great Pontiff himself was unable to entangle more than
a very few in the yoke from which they had escaped.
Failing this, he repeated a few years later, at the
Fourth Lateran Council (12 15), the Church's sentence
against the Waldenses, including them under a com-
mon ban with the Cathari and the whole rabble rout of
Manichaeans and others with whom they have so often
since been confounded ; for, singularly enough, there
has been from the beginning a temptation to mix up
these and those ; and that temptation has made itself
felt not on one side only but on both, on the side alike
of foes and friends. The ipotive in either case is not
difficult to trace. Enemies have sought to confound,
that so there might be imputed to the Waldenses
any evil which had been brought home to the Albi-

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254

THE WALDENSES.

genses ; and, these last having been convicted of enor-
mous errors In doctrine and practice, that the con-
demnation might embrace the Waldenses as well.
Friends have sought to identify them out of the wish
to recruit the scanty number of witnesses for Scrip-
tural and Apostolical truth in the dark ages of the
Church ; as certainly it would prove no small numer-
ical addition if the Albigenses might be counted
among these.

And yet, neither then nor at any time before the
Reformation was the attitude of the Waldenses to
Rome, or the Roman Church to them, exacdy the
same as that which ruled between her and the other
bodies which secretly conspired against her, or openly
defied her. It is true that they were included in the
same anathema as the others; that Rome, enduring
no departure in great or small from her teaching,
counted all dissidents worthy of death ; but, for all
this, the war between her and the Waldenses was not
before the Reformation altogether the same which was
waged between her and the Manichaean Cathari or
the pantheistic Brethren of the Free Spirit These
latter were Irreconcilables, and never could be any-
thing else. In their sight Rome was simply the Syna-
gogue of Satan, and either she or they must perish :
— the same moral universe could not hold them both.
But neither in this nor in any other matter did the
Waldenses own any solidarity or make common cause
with the other sectaries of the time. For them the
Church of Rome was a Church which had grievously
fallen away from the purity of the faith, — ^which had
overlaid the truth with numerous errors ; but they did
not deny that souls were saved in her, did not regard

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THE WALDENSES.

255

themselves so much a Church apart, as rather the
sound kernel of the Church. Seeing that they
attended divine offices in Catholic churches when they
were permitted so to do, that their children were bap-
tized by Catholic priests, that they received the Holy
Communion at their hands, — of all which there is
abundant proof, — it is plain that in their sight Rome
as a Church had not absolutely forfeited her right to
this name.

Then, too, however unfriendly Roman Catholic
writers of that age may be, they bring no such charge
against the Waldenses as they bring so abundantly
against the other sects. Their enemies themselves
being judges, their conversion was edifying ; they went
not to law brother with brother ; they swore no pro-
fane oaths, indeed no oaths at all ; a lie was in tiheir
sight a mortal sin. They shunned taverns, dances,
and all occasions which might serve as provocatives
to evil. They djd not seek to grow rich, but lived,
and were well content to live, by the labour of their
hands, — the whole fashion of their lives a rebuke to the
unholy living of too many calling themselves Catho-
lics, nor least to the conversation of not a few who
ministered in the holiest things. It would have been
impossible, as a modem Roman Catholic Church-histo-
rian admits, to get up a Crusade against them.

Those who have the same enemies are not therefore
friends ; but, admitting this, so long as the ' Cathari
were a danger and a menace to the Roman Church, the
intense aversion of the Waldenses to these " devils,"
— for so they called them, — must have constituted
some sort of bond between the Church and them.
Certainly it is not a little curious to read, and in a

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256

THE WALDENSES.

treatise written against them, that oftentimes a priest,
being engaged in controversy with a Manichaean, in-
voked the aid of a Waldensian, as better versed in the
Scripture than himself, by whose help to convince a
gainsayer. The operation of all these causes could
not fail to exert a certain influence on the relations
between the Church and those whom she had put
nominally under a common ban with the Manichaean
and thie libertine. It may be urged indeed that if she
did not burn so many of these subalpine dissenters as
she burned of the Albigenses, this is explicable from
the fact that there were not so many, or nearly so
many, to burn. This is true, and explains something,
but not all. Even in proportion to their numbers
they were much more rarely the victims of the Inqui-
sition ; and in what has just been said an explanation
of this may be found.

It is only too easy to place a stronger emphasis on
the points of difference between the Waldenses in the
earlier periods of their existence, and the dominant
Church, than the actual facts would warrant And
doubtless the tendency of later times has been to put
them forward as more distincdy protesting against the
whole body of medieval accretions to the truth or de-
partures from the truth, and thus more Protestant,
than they actually were. Neither is it hard to per-
ceive how this has come to pass. I do not urge here
the temptation which lies so very near to us, when we
write the story of some in whom we are deeply inter-
ested, to write it as we should like it to have been,
not as it actually was. This may have done some-
thing; but it is easy to perceive a more influential
source of error. What the Waldenses learned to

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257

hold and teach after contact with the Hussites in the
fifteenth century, and still more after communications
held in the sixteenth with some chief continental Re-
formers, has been regarded as that which they held
from the beginning. But it is altogether a reversing
of the real order of things to make the Waldenses
teachers of the Reformers : they were learners from
them. Sufficient attention has not always been paid
to the fact that, as a result of this intercourse, distinc-
tive features of their own teaching had disappeared,
distinctive features of the theology of the Reformation
had been adopted. And the error of confounding
what the Waldenses were and what they taught in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with what they had
been and had taught in the twelfth and thirteenth was
the more difficult to escape, seeing that, after this
intercourse held with religious bodies stronger and
often clearer views than dieir own, there was a not
unnatural desire to bring earlier confessions of faith,
hymns, liturgies, and the like, into perfect agreement
widi later convictions. Where this was done, if any-
where it was done, with intent to claim for the past of
their history merits which did not rightly belong to it,
such a falsification of facts deserves the most earnest
reprobation. But such reactive dealing with their docu-
ments is explicable on perfectly honourable grounds,
and may have expressed no more than their desire to
bring these into harmony with later convictions.

The Noble Lesson, to which I have referred already,
though not nearly so old as for long it was supposed
to be (see p. 249), is about the oldest and most
authoritative document to which we can appeal. This
tractate, written in verse, is an earnest summons to

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258 THE WALDENSES.

repentance, to amendment of life, to the exercise of
Christian graces, to the doing of good works, — ^all
this in view of the shortness of this present life ; the
greatness of the rewards, and the terribleness of the
penalties which after death severally await those who
have done good or evil; with a solemn warning
against that peace which is no peace, against all those
false means by which the Church of Rome quieted or
rather stupefied men's consciences in regard of the
judgment to come. But what is most remarkable is
that, while Christ's sufferings and death are there set
forth as the proof that as many as live godly must suf-
fer persecution, there is, in all the five hundred or
more lines which make up this poem, only a single line
which contains a reference, and that but historically,
to the death of Christ as a redemptive act ; no word
at all of the duty and blessedness of making by faith
the benefits of that death our own. Elsewhere I find
the same immense omission ; and indeed everywhere
a certain thinness more or less the characteristic of
all the religious literature of the Waldenses; — with
the exception indeed of one prayer in verse, called
Lo Payre Etemel, which, whether as theology or
poetry, appears to me to stand on a far higher level
than the rest. And then, too, doctrines are put into a
prominence which would not justly belong to them,—
touching as they do but the outer circumference of
the Christian life, even if they were true ; but which
we are still less prepared to welcome, when we are
persuaded that thtfy are not true, but mis-interpreta-
tions of the words of Christ and his Apostles, — mainly
of his own words in the Sermon on the Mount; or
statements such as in their entirely subjective view of

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259

things would go far to render the existence of a
Church as a corporate body impossible.

It will be seen from what has been said, that if any-
one turns to these authoritative writings, expecting to
find in them the fulness and freeness of the Pauline
teaching on the redemptive work of Christ, on the for-
giveness of sin, on our justification by faith in Him, he
will be disappointed. He will find the supremacy of
Holy Scripture asserted as against every teaching and
tradition of men ; but the prevailing type of doctrine
is less that of St Paul than of St James. Nor is this
very strange. That, as we have seen, which constituted
the original heart and kernel of the Waldensian move-
ment was not opposition to any doctrine taught in
the Church of Rome, but a desire, first stirred up
through the reading of the Holy Scriptures, after the
highest form of Christian life and that nearest to the
Apostolical pattern. Only gradually, and not until
after they had been cast out, did^ the Waldenses dis-
cover that doctrinally also much was amiss in that
body which had so violently separated them from itself.
But even then it was the corruptions standing in the
way of a high and holy living which called out their
strongest protest Indulgences, Purgatory, — ^and this
in the face, as they said, of God's own Word, "As the
tree falleth so it must lie," — it was these, and such as
these, abating as they did the moral earnestness where-
with men should work out their salvation, which aroused
their most indignant remonstrance. But for the set-
ting forth of what are called by pre-eminence the doc-
trines of grace, there are Doctors of the medieval
Church who very much surpass them. St Anselm and
St Bernard may have built on the one Foundation

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26o THE WALDENSES.

some "wood, hay and stubble" which the dissidents
of the Alps would not have been tempted to employ ;
but, taking these two at their best and highest, there
utters itself in them a trust in Christ and in Christ's
merits alone, a passionate cry of the sinner for grace
and for nothing else but grace, which coming from the
heart reaches to the heart, such as I cannot say that I
have found in all the writings of those with whom we
now have to do.

Marvellous indeed is the sustaining, quickening,
binding power of the Word of God. With a complex
of doctrine theologically incomplete ; having only im-
perfectly extricated themselves from errors which had
in the lapse of centuries overgrown the Church ; and
even where they got rid of Roman error not always
having seized with firm hand the truth of which this
was the caricature or the denial; they yet lived on
from age to age, a light in a dark place : they lived on
too, which from one point of view is the more to their
honour, without having produced a single theological
genius or other preeminent leader of their own. The
Friends of God could boast their Nicolas of Basle, in-
visible Pope of an invisible Church; the pantheistic
Mystics could claim an Amalrich of Bena, and one
half of an Eckart ; the apocalyptic enthusiasts their
Joachim of Floris; other religious bodies* too had their
single spokesman and champion, who stood high above
the crowd ; — but no one stands out among these :
they hold their championship in common ; the honour
of it is shared among them all.

Let me note, before we part company with the Wal-
denses, for I cannot follow their history further, that
the Reformation brought no remission of their trials,

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THE WALDENSES. 261

but rather an aggravation of them. As the result of
the assimilation of their teaching to that of the Ger-
man and Swiss Reformers, their antagonism to the
Church of Rome, and hers to them, became sharper
and more defined than ever ; while, planted as they
were in the very heart of the countries which had put
back the Reformation and still remained constant to
the Roman Obedience, remote from brethren of their
own faith, they were in their isolation as sheep among
wolves ; and were subject again and again to persecu-
tion and outrage, now from the Kings of France,
oftener from the Dukes of Savoy, sometimes from
other neighbouring princes, who would fain share in
the privilege of dipping their hands in the blood of
God's saints. There are cruelties which it is an un-
speakable horror even to read of, and which none
should read of unless compelled by necessity; and
these are of them. It was one of the most devilish of
such persecutions, in 1655, which called out the noble
remonstrance of Cromwell, and the cry to heaven of
Milton —

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold/'

to which I have referred already.

But they lived through all ; downtrodden, yet not
crushed ; as the bush ever burning, and yet never con-
sumed. And now a serener hour has succeeded, and
the temptations which threaten them in the present
are not those which threatened them in the times which
are past. We will not renounce a hope that this
ecclesiola pressa, this little Church in the wilderness,
may have been kept for great things ; may yet have a

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262 THE WALDENSES.

part, and an important one, to play in the recovering^
of Italy to a living faith in God and in the Gospel of
his Son. Thrown as the missionary activity of its
members mainly is upon the Italian side of the Alps,
let us hope that these will not be content with detach-
ing and drawing out one here and one there from the
communion of the national Church, and in that way
discrediting and disintegrating the only Church which
the great body of Italians will ever know or accept ;
but will at least make the experiment, whether that
whole Italian Church may not be led to move as one
body in the way of reformation : and this a reformation
not borrowed in the gross from the South German or
Swiss Reformers of the sixteenth century; but such as
a closer study of Scripture, a nearer acquaintance with
antiquity as it really was, and a due consideration of
their own historic, moral, and religious evolution in
the past shall commend to their consciences. And this
may be, if only they will have learned how easy it is to
destroy, how hard to build up; that an actual house to
shelter us, which may not be all that we desire, is yet
a blessing not Hghdy to be cast away, even though a
building much more to our mind may rise up before
our eyes ; but one existing at present, and likely to
exist for long, only in imagination and hope.

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LECTURE XVIII.

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS.

The first period of the Scholastic Theology may be
said to have closed with the condemnation of Abelard.
The second period has its own peculiar features. The
works of Aristotle have become far better known in
the West than they were in the century preceding.
Many of these, hitherto inaccessible, have been ren-
dered into Latin, some from the Greek, some at second
hand from the Arabic translations. For these last we
have mainly to thank the Crusades ; but Spain also
yielded some. The partial ban of the Church under
which for a time Aristode lay has been taken off.
Men run indeed into an opposite extreme ; they refer
to him as "the philosopher," without counting it ne-
cessary to name him, just as Homer is " the Poet " for
Greek commentators and scholiasts. " Master of those
who know,'* he is regarded in the light of a supple-
mentary Apostle, whom the heathen world has con-
tributed as a complement to the Twelve ; or as a fore-
runner of Christ in the kingdom of nature, in the same
way as was afterwards John the Baptist in the kingdom
of grace. A citation from "him on some ethical ques-
tion is not less effectual to close a debate and decide a
question than one drawn from Holy Writ But with
all this his influence tells more on the form than on
the spirit ; which is not to be wondered at, when we

263

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264 ^^^ SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS.

keep in mind that it is not his ethical writings, but his
logical, which mainly rule the Middle Ages.

Under the shaping power of these the dialectic
method predominates more and more. Every state-
ment which can assume a syllogistic form is compelled
to assume one. The second manner of the School-
men, it is true, was involved in the first ; but they had
not hitherto claimed the whole region of theology as
their own ; nor insisted, as now they do, that not
merely this question or that, as it emerges, but every
question, actual or imaginable, should pass through
tiieir mill, and submit itself to the conditions of treat-
ment by them imposed. The jealousy of the hierarchy,
which at first had stood in their way, has now disap-
peared. Scholasticism on the one side, warned by the
fate of *Abelard, is itself more cautious than when it
first tried its power; recognizes the limits which it
must not seek to overpass. The Church upon the
other, conscious that it cannot dispense with this, the
master-passion and the master-science of the time, and
reassured that it has here an ally and not a covert foe,
has become more tolerant.

I mentioned to you in a former Lecture how the
Mendicants, who were very far from inheriting St
Francis' contempt for books, had forced their way, de-
spite the most strenuous resistance from those already
in possession, into some of the most important chairs
in the chief Universities of Europe. The University
which they first took by storm was that which bore the
highest name, the University of Paris (1230) ; Oxford,
next to Paris in reputation, followed before long. Nor
can it be denied that their appearance on the scene

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THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS. 265

gave a new impulse to all the academical studies, to
that of theology above all. From the first they so
made the chief problems which were occupying the
minds of men their own, that for nearly two centuries
it would be' impossible so much as to attempt to tell
the story of the Friars without telling that of theology
as well; or, conversely, that of theology without tell-
ing also theirs, so inextricably intertwined and bound
up are they with one another.

The Franciscans and Dominicans, owning a certain
solidarity of interest, so long as they were maintaining
a common cause as against the older monastic and aca-
demical foundations, were not the less divided against
each other ; and, the battle against those older being
won, the rivalry between themselves which had hitherto
displayed itself in a narrower, more personal sphere,
now expatiated in a larger and a theological. Of this
rivalry I have spoken a little already, but not in its
theological aspects. It was soon found that wherever,
within such limits as the Church allowed, there waa
room for a difference, if the Dominicans took one
side, tlie Franciscans ranged themselves on the other.
In the active competition for public favour which ex-
isted between the Orders, the Dominicans for a. long
time could boast a Doctor, to whom the Franciscans,
much to their annoyance, could produce no peer. This
was St. Thomas (b. 1228, d. 1274), son of a Count of
Aquino in the kingdom of Naples, thence known as
Thomas Aquinas, the pupil of Albertus Magnus, and
himself probably the most successful organizer of
knowledge since Aristotle whom the world has known.
His Sum of Theology and other works might fill us
with amazement, had he lived and laboured man's

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266 THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS,

allotted threescore years and ten, much more do they
excite our astonishment if we remember that he died
when scarcely two-thirds of these years were accom-
plished. The Franciscans indeed, who could put for-
ward an Alexander Hales (d. 1245), the first of theirs
who won for himself a chair in the University of Paris,
and a John of Fidanza, better known as Bonaventura
(b. 1 221, d. 1274), could not have been said to be
poorly furnished with scholars and saints ; but it was
only in Duns Scotus (d. 1308) that they felt them-
selves to have found at last one for whom without ex-
aggeration they might challenge an equal place to that
of the illustrious Dominican.

From that time forward, Thomists or followers of
Thomas, which all Dominicans were, and Scotists, of
Scotus, which were all Franciscans, divide men's suf-
frages between them; those outside of the two Orders
attaching themselves theologically to the one School
of doctrine or the other. There were serious differ-
ences between them, but these nearly always to the
advantage of the Thomists. Thus the teaching of these
on the matter of the Atonement jyas not, it is true, all
which St Anselm's had been ; but it did not conscious-
ly depart from it : — they too taught that the offering of
the Son of God was a " satisfaction " in the strictest
sense of the word, and the only satisfaction which
could anywhere have been found ; therefore absolute-
ly indispensable, if sin was to be forgiven ; and draw-
ing after it not by arbitrary decree but by moral ne-
cessity the redemption of those on whose behalf the
ransom was paid. Not so the Scotists. The relation
of Christ's propitiatory death to the sin of men, they
said, was an arbitrary and constituted one. God was

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THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS. 267

pleased by a gratuitous arrangement on his part to
accept this particular sacrifice as an equivalent for the
sins of mankind. He might have accepted any other
-substitute, or He might have dispensed with demand-
ing any substitute at all. How near to Socinianism
pure and simple they were here it is not difficult to see.
What the Son of God did, an Angel, even a holy man,
might if God had so willed it, and He was free to will
it, have accomplished the same. The omnipotence of
God might be honoured by such teaching ; but at the
expense of what is infinitely more precious, his justice.

In the matter of sin and grace, and of the relation
in which these stand to one another, the Thomists,
professing herein to follow the teaching of St. Augus-
tine, have again the advantage. It must be owned
that their doctrine of grace and the freedom of grace
lacks much of the fulness and freedom of his from
whom they professed to have learned it. Still it is far
nearer to this than the Semi-pelagianism of the Scot-
ists.

Then too the Dominicans were content to forfeit no
litde popularity by their resistance to the doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
Mary ; — practically the taking of her out of the num-
ber of those for whom Christ died. Among the "glo-
ries of Mary " this, if only it had been true, would
have been the chiefest, — to wit, that she, no less than
her Divine Son. had been from the very beginning ex-
empt from any share in .that transmitted fault of our
nature which is the portion of all other children of
Adam. Up to the middle of the twelfth century no
teacher of eminence had accepted this doctrine ; many.
as St Anselm and St Bernard, had expressly con-

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268 THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS,

demned it, as contrary to Scripture, to the Church's
use, to tradition, to reason. -But it was popular, and
growing in popularity ; and from the time that Duns
Scotus, always willing to find himself in opposition to
Aquinas, made it his own, it became a distinctive note
of the Scotists ; all those who opposed having the of-
fensive nickname of " Maculists " fastened upon them,
affixing, as that name implied they did, a spot or stain
on her whom God had made spodess.

But besides the theological, there were philoso-
phical antagonisms between the Schoolmen, dividing
them into two opposite camps — that of the Nominal-
ists and of the Realists. I feel how extremely difficult,
nay how impossible is any popular treatment of the
subject upon the threshold of which we now stand ;
the absolute necessity under which I shall lie, of carry-
ing you into regions in which your senses will prove
more or less unexercised. As you listen you will
hardly fail to say within yourselves. What have specu-
lations such as* these, philosophical and not theologi-
cal, to do with Church history ? I feel all this ; yet I
could not avoid the subject if I would. The contro-
versy between Nominalists and Realists, philosophical
at the beginning, and inheritied from the old Schools
of Greece, mixed itself up before long with all the
theological controversies of the Middle Ages; it found
its way into discussions, where at first sight it must
have seemed merely a stranger and an intruder, but
in which it presently vindicated its right to take a part
and to count itself at home. Nominalism and Real-
ism are severally the banners under one or other of
which all the illustrious thinkers of those Ages rallied;
and there could be no idler attempt than the attempt

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THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS, 269

to trace the course of the Scholastic Theology, or
indeed to trace the thought of the Middle Ages at all,
without reference to them. Add to this that the con-
troversy is not a dead thing, belonging to a dead past
Rather is it one of those imperishable controversies
which seem to renew themselves with every new
change which passes over the world of thought.
Whether we may be aware of the fact or not, we have
not escaped, as neither will those who come after us
escape, from it. We are every one of us continually
taking, whether we know it or not, one side or the
other, implicidy avouching ourselves Nominalists or
Realists, as the case may be.

What then was this grand dispute, which, seeming
so remote from the practical life of men, yet, strangely
enough^ was able for centuries to fill the Schools
with its tumult ? It concerned itself, I may say gen-
erally, with names and with things ; with things, that
is, as they are gathered and grouped under common
names on the ground of qualities common to them all.
To these " universals," for such in technical language
these comprehensive generic names were called, the
Nominalist refused to attribute any substantial exist-
ence. He regarded them as mere abstractions, fictions,
the breath of men's mouths, and no more. Only the
individual had any proper existence for him. Generic
terms might be useful mental implements, enabling
the mind to grasp in some sort of unity the multipli-
city of things ; but this was their whole worth. All
true knowledge was in his esteem the result of expe-
rience. Universals for him were names and nothing
more ; Nominalist therefore he was fidy called.

Not so the Realist. For him these universals cor-

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270 THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS.

responded very nearly to the ideas of Plato. They
were not merely an imaginative framework which each
man fills up with the results of his own experience ;
but, so to speak, archetypal patterns, according -to
which tlie individual things, which are only weak
"shadows of the true," are subsequently fashioned.
Man is before men, not men before Man. Universals
for him are realities, and the only realities ; and Rea-
list is therefore the name which he bears. Take the
following as the summing up of what just has been
said : Universalia post rem was the position of the
Nominalist ; Universalia ante rem was that of the Rea-
list ; the last sometimes advancing so far to meet his
opponent as to admit this statement, Universalia in re^
which was the reconciling via media of the Aristote-
lians. ^

An example will often help us to understand what
would have been nearly unintelligible without it. Here
is the word " righteousness," with the notion corre-
sponding to tliis which I have framed for myself. Do
the various acts which have come within my ken give
my ilotion of righteousness ; — a notion which I have
abstracted from all these, combining them anew in my
own mind ; and one which would have been incon-
ceivable except by their aid ? Or, on the contrary, is
the idea of righteousness, for men and for every man,
anterior to these several righteous acts, — not borrowed
or derived from them, but only recognized as finding
a partial embodiment in each of them ; an idea which
would equally have been, having its own independent
subsistence, whether these acts, or any other like these,
had ever been wrought or not? If I say the first, I
am a Nominalist, and for me universals are subse-

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THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS. 27 1

quent to particulars, — ^have in fact no real existence
whatever, however they may help me' to sum up isp-
lated phenomena under general heads. If I say the
second, I am a Realist, and affirm that universals are
anterior to particulars, are the abiding moulds in which
these are cast.

You will, I am confident, by this time have per-
ceived that the strife is not altogether one about words,
that very important issues may here come into debate.
A Nominalist need not be a materialist ; though this
and other charges, as tritheist, atheist, were freely laid
against him, as necessary consequences of what he
held ; but a Realist cannot be a materialist, seeing that,
if there be an anterior independent world of thoughts
or archetypal ideas, there must be a Thinker, who can
be no other than God. The Church could scarcely
condemn a man for being a Nominalist, but it long re-
garded such with a suspicion not very much to be
wondered at. Starting from the Nominalist's position,
did it not inevitably follow that all invisible things, all
which had not some sensible counterparts, were mere
creations or forms of the intellect, modes of thinking?
The disfavour with which the Church regarded them,
not to speak of the shattering defeat which Anselm
inflicted on Roscelin, one of their earlier champions
(1092), so told against them that for a long time they
hardly gave signs of life. But they were not dead.
Before the coming of the end a man of rare genius
arose, our English Occam, in many ways a forerunner
of Locke ; who, taking advantage of the excesses into
which the Realists, so long undisputed masters of the
field, had run, found in a Nominalism by him revived,
and with its weak points strengthened, engines for the

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272 THE SCHOOLMEN, AND THE MENDICANTS.

assaulting of the Church's dogma, such as needed
only to be advanced a litde further, and not the ojut-
works merely of the heavenly Temple, but the very
Sanctuary itself, would have come within the range of
his assaults (see p. 202).

One of the most serious mischiefs attending the
prevalence of the scholastic method was the extent to
which it threw into the background the devotional
study of Holy Scripture, and indeed this study alto-
gether. Those texts by which a position of the Church
might be defended, or a position of gainsayers and
opposers assailed, were familiar enough ; they were to
be found in the manuals which were in all hands ; but
the complaint rose early on the part of the Biblicists, —
for there were some who now obtained this honourable
tide, — that even those who made theology their study,
less and less betook themselves to the divine fountains
of knowledge ; that Scripture itself was more and
more neglected. And the charge, though often greatly
exaggerated, had its truth. Manuals of theology,
some of them first-rate in their kind, did yet by their
method, and even by the very merits which they pos-
sessed, abate men's study of that one Book for which
all others in the world are no substitute and no com-
pensation. Such was that famous Manual which had
Peter Lombard (d. 11 64) for its author; — his "widow's
mite," as he called it, cast into the treasury of the
Church ; and which for nearly three centuries authori-
tatively dominated the Schools, almost every Doctor
adopting it as the text-book on which he lectured.
This unpretending volume is a selection of proofs of
the Church's doctrine drawn from the Fathers, mainly

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THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS. 273

from St Augustine, and from Holy Scripture ; the
citations, which for the most part are very brief, being
pieced together by this " Master of Sentences " with
admirable skill, and- with an endeavour every where
manifest not to restrict freedom more than a. due sub-
mission to the Church's scheme of doctrine absolutely
required. Students of theology, who found, or be-
lieved that they found, here or in other similar hand-
books, all which was necessary for the establishing of
the faith, came less and less to search the Scripture
for themselves. It was possible, and not uncommon,
to be a very famous Doctor, and at the same time
a very sorry Scripturist indeed.

The Scholastic Philosophy had rendered in its day
essential service to the Church. None who are capa-
ble of judging will deny this. For minds which had
lain torpid during a long and dreary night, it had ap-
proved itself a healthy gymnastic, an intellectual ex-
ercise which they could not without serious loss have
gone without One important province of Christian
Apology it had occupied and made its own, as none
before or since have done. And yet, despite of all
this, whatsoever was soundest and best in the mind
and heart of Western Christendom desired, in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, nothing so much as
to be rid of it wholly. Nor is it hard to understand
this mingled hatred and contempt, — for we can employ
no softer words, — wherewith they regarded this the
darling study of the ages preceding.

The true-hearted in every Christian land were yearn-
ing more and more after a Reformation of the Church
in its head and in its members. But the Schoolmen
were not Reformers ; they were, and always had been,

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274 ^^^ SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS.

defenders of that which was. Every attempt to revive
the higher life of the Church, to abate mischiefs
which were impending, which indeed had gone very far
to strangle that life, found the most determined opposi-
tion from them. I ventured to call them rn a former
Lecture the Knight Errants of the Medieval Theology,
holding the lists against all comers. This, which once
and contemplated from one point of view was their
glory, was what now discredited, and justly discredited
them the most. There was nothing which, if it formed
part of the Church's accepted system, they had not at
all times shown themselves ready to defend ; — the
most baseless pretensions, the grossest superstition,
the abuse which was the mushroom growth of yester-
day equally with the truth which had been once deliv-
ered to the saints. The withdrawal of the cup from
the laity : transubstantiation, simony if practised by a
Pope; purgatory; indulgences; the burning of here-
tics; and what not besides, — abusing their dialectic
dexterity, they found reasons, and, in some sort of
fashion. Scripture for all. With all their questioning,
with all their affectation of independence, they never
questioned any point, small or great, which the Church
had determined ; or only questioned with a foregone
purpose of setting it on a* securer basis than ever,
rearing some new buttress with which to strengthen
it ; for their fortunes, and the fortunes of the Church
as it was, they felt to be bound up together, and that
the overthrow of either would be the overthrow of
both.

Scholasticism, very living once, was little better
now than a mummy. Let us follow it to its grave.
In the latter half of the fourteenth century the life had

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THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS,

275

well-nigh gone out of it, but it lingered on through
the larger part of the century following ; Gabriel Biel,
who died in 1495, being the last Schoolman of any
name or reputation. It was now almost wholly occu-
pied with questions generally idle and unprofitable,
often absurd and profane; the green pastures of
Scripture being more and more deserted for arid and
dreary wastes, where there was nothing to refresh,
nothing to feed the soul. The old controversy about
" universals " had long been picked to the bone ; but
the wrangle over the skeleton went forward still. It
was in vain that men like Gerson sought to recal it to
nobler functions ; to ally it, if this were possible,
with the Mystic Theology, and thus to put some life
and warmth into it. But it would take no new im-
pressions ; and all attempts to correct it served only
to lay barer its faults, to augment its discredit, and to
hasten its fall.

Meanwhile the progress of the Renaissance, the re-
newed acquaintance with those forms and models of
perfect art which classical literature so freely fur-
nished, brought into ever stronger contrast all of harsh,
rugged, and repulsive which was in the form of these
scholastic speculations : while beyond the form there
was now next to nothing ; or if something, that some-
thing utterly estranged from the actual life of men,
and of no practical use or worth whatsoever. The
New Learning which offered itself as a rival candidate
for the homage and affections of men was in due time
to reveal dangers of its own, and dangers the most
serious. Of these I propose hereafter to speak ; but it
is easy to perceive how fair and attractive this New
Learning must have showed, with all its human inter-

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276 THE SCHOOLMEN AND THE MENDICANTS.

ests, and holding as it did the keys which opened into
a wonder-world of grace and harmony and beauty, as
set beside the formless, effete and old which was all
that the Schoolmen had to offer.

If you wish to measure the depth of the contempt
into which these sophists of our modern world had
fallen, and what was the feeling of learned Germany
about them, the Life of Ulrich von Hutten (b. 1488, d.
1523) and the story of the so-called Letters of Obscure
Men (15 1 6) would tell you something about this;
while Luther, a litde later, can hardly name Aristode,
— ^whom, not unjusdy, he regarded as the father and
prince of the Schoolmen,^-otherwise than as "that
arch-scoundrel Aristode" {sceleratissimus ille nebtUo
Aristoteles). Would we understand in what esteem
they were held in England, we may obtain a glimpse
of this from a litde fact, — namely that about this same
time Duns Scotus, of whom you heard just now, the
Doctor Subtilis of the later Schools, " the wittiest of
the school-divines," as Hooker calls him, contributed
the word "dunce" to the English language. To
avouch oneself a follower of Duns, "a Duns-man,"
was equivalent to being oneself numbered among the
dunces. There is a strange irony in such a close to
an intellectual movement like that which we have
been describing.

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LECTURE XIX.

THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY,

The Papacy for the better part of a century continued
' at those proud heights to which Innocent IIL, develop-
ing to the full all which was logically included in the
Hildebrandine idea^ had raised it. To this period be-
longs, as we have seen, the triumphant close of the.
conflict with the Emperors of the Hohenstaufen line r-
nor did there want during this time occupants of the
Papal Chair, who, accepting the legacy of greatness
bequeathed to them, showed themselves not incom-
petent to hold what others had won. But for all this,
forces even then were too surely undermining that
wondrous fabric which had been reared to such peril-
ous heights. There happened here what is wont in
nearly all such cases to happen, namely that hidden
forces work for long, unnoticed save by a very few ;
and only some sudden catastrophe at the last reveals
how effectual their operation had been. It is not
"with observation" that kingdoms either of this world
or of the other, rise or fall, come or go.

Let me name some elements of weakness cleaving
to that which showed to the common eye as strong as
«t had ever been. And first, the edifice which those
daring architects had planned paid the penalty which
in this world is found sooner or later to be the lot of
all over-greatness. It is not material buildings alone

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278 THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY.

which may be reared too high for safety, in their very
height containing the pledge of their own downfall.
The vastness of this spiritual dominion, the absence*
from it of law and limitation, in which, after all, true
and abiding strength resides, threatened its duration
and were as a prophecy of its doom. There is per-
haps no writing of the Middle Ages which at all brings
us to the understanding of what this over-greatness
was, to be matched witl) a treatise, very moderate in
bulk, — On Self-Consideration is the name it bears, —
which has St. Bernard for its author. It is by him ad-
dressed to Pope Eugeni'us III. This Pope had been
his scholar at Clairvaux, and to his influence mainly
owed his elevation to the Papal throne; so that St.
Bernard felt little difficulty in warning him with all
plainness of speech, and certainly he does not spare
to use this, against the dangers and temptations which
beset that perilous and giddy eminence to which he
had been exalted. It is a picture full of terror, though
drawn by a friend, of what it was to be Pope ; a
tracing by the hand of a master in the heavenly life,
of the subtle influences, not from one side only but
from many, which were evermore insidiously at work
for the moral secularization, — we have no word in
English corresponding to the German "Verweldi-
chung," — pf the man who, as standing at the centre
of the spiritual life of Christendom, ought himself to
be found the most spiritual of all. ^

Neither may we leave out of sight the growth of
nationalities, the waking up, as from a long winter
sleep, of one nation after another to a consciousness *
that it was not a mere limb of the Papacy, but a nation,
with the possibilities of an independent national life of

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THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY. 279

its own, — ^bound to follow after and unfold this, if it
would attain the measure of its appointed greatness,
and fulfil the part allotted to it, in the grand scheme
of God's providence. The policy of Rome tended to
the repressing and crushing of all which was individual '
and distinctive in the life of the separate nations of the
European family, to a bringing of all to one uniformity
of level. Where they had a use of their own in the
service of God; she was not content till she had wrested
it from them ; or, if under strong pressure she grudg-
ingly allowed it, this was only for a time, the allow-
ance being presently narrowed, and at the first favour-
able opportunity withdrawn. So fared it, for example,
with the Gothic Liturgy in Spain, the Slavonic in the
East of Europe. There was never upon her part any
hearty and loving acceptance of the differences which
individualized the nations of Europe, and made them
as many members, each was its own office, of one and
the same body. It was this awakened national feeling
in France which enabled Philip the Fair to fight a win-
ning battle with Boniface VIII., of which presently. It
was the growth of the same national feeling in Eng-
land which animated Edward III. and his Parliament
and people in their resistance to Papal aggressions
and exactions, and which dictated all that bold legisla-
tion which made his reign so memorable an epoch in
the constitutional history of our land. Of this too
hereafter I hope to speak something more.

With this quickening of national life, and indeed as
a part of it, there went the discovery, that not the
Latin only, but also the newly-formed languages of
Europe were vessels capable of containing the precious
wine of God's trjith, and all other thoughts which were

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280 THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY.

worth the thinking and preserving. ' Dante, in his
Divine Comedy, the swan-like dirge of the dying and
departing Middle Ages, — for such in one aspect it is,
if in another the joyous greeting of a new and a better
time, — Dante had most gloriously attested this. No
one henceforward could affect to despise the tongue,
.vulgar or popular as it might be called, in which
thoughts and imaginations such as his had been en-
shrined. Assuredly it was not a trivial gain that the \
reign of Latin, as the exclusive language of the Church,
of literature, of learning, should thus be drawing to an
end. It was a sure token that much else was drawing
to a close as well.

And then too, important moral supports were slip-
ping away from the Papacy ; and not the less surely,
that there was nothing to proclaim that they were thus
disappearing. The enthusiasm for the Crusades, and
for the Pope as the leader and manager of these con-
quests of the Cross over the Crescent, — for conquests
they were long regarded as destined to be, — was
waning, or indeed had wholly waned. He could no
longer send some Prince whose absence he desired,
upon a distant and dangerous enterprize, from which
it was at least not impossible that he should never re-
turn ; nor could he use an absence thus brought about
for purposes of his own. As little could a Pope now
make acceptance and fulfilment of the crusader's vow
the condition of reconciliation with the Church, as In- j
nocent III. had done in the case of Raymond of Tou-
louse; or deal with one who, having assumed the
Cross, should afterwards evade or repudiate the obli-
gation, as having drawn back to perdition, — as
Gregory IX. dealt with the Emperor Frederick II.

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THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY. 281

Then again the vast sums of money raised to defray
the expenses of these cosdy expeditions, but with the ;
employment of which men were v.ery ill satisfied, did not j
pass through his hands or accumulate in his treasury >
any longer. More serious default even than this, the
Pope had no longer armies at his disposal, which, got \
together for one purpose, namely for the winning
back of the Holy Sepulchre, he could launch in any
quarter he would ; qualifying as a Crusade, and there-
fore as the fulfilment of the crusader's vow, a war
waged at his bidding against any whom he was
pleased to denounce as enemies of the Church.

It is in the Pontificate of Boniface VIII. (i 294-1 303) \
that we recognize the first unmistakable signs that the
high tides which had upborne the Papacy so triumph
antly thus far, had reached their highest, and were be-
ginning to ebb. He was exactly the man to bring
about such a crisis. With the same unbounded pre-
tensions as his most famous predecessors, but with
none of their deep moral convictions, he put forward
claims which even a Gregory VII. or an Innocent III.
would, in the altered temper of the times, have found
it hard to make good. For indeed the times were
altered; proofs and arguments which passed muster
once would not pass muster any more. Claiming for
himself a divine authority to disinherit kings, to trans-
fer their kingdoms to others, it was no longer sufficient
to appeal to the words of Jeremiah, "See, I have this
day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms,
to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to
throw down, to build, and to plant" (1. 10). As little
did the words of St. Paul, " He that is spiritual judgeth
all things, but he himself is judged of no man" (i Cor.

' 2L.

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282 THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY.

ii. 15), put beyond question that the Pope was supreme
and final arbiter of all disputes in Christendom. Christ
might have admonished Peter, " When thou art con-
verted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32); yet
this was not any longer accepted as a decisive proof
of Papal infallibility. He might have said to his dis-
ciples concerning the two swords, Vlt is enough"
(Luke xxii. 38), whereas, it was argued, rf*He had dis-
approved, He would have said, "It is too irfif^;" but
when it was concluded from this that there v^e two
jurisdictions in the world, the one spiritual and the
other temporal, both to be wielded, the one by the
Church, and the other for the Church, there were
many whom this argument failed to convince. Nay,
even an appeal to the fact that God had set at the be-
ginning two lights in the firmament, a greater and a
lesser (Gen. i. 16), the greater being a symbol of the
priesthood, and the lesser of the kingdom, — this, which
had done such excellent service in times past, to which
Pope Innocent III. was never weary of appealing, was
found now to have lost much of its convincing power.
It was not long before Pope Boniface found himself,
in an evil hour, committed to a mortal quarrel with
one as crafty, as proud, as rapacious as himself, —
Philip the Fair (1285-1314), King of France; who
now at the head of a strongly compacted monarchy
took up the quarrel which the Emperors had dropt.
Many differences between the two had been patched
up, but this proceeded to extremities. Presendy
letters are exchanged in which all ordinary restraints
and decencies of language are on both sides cast
away; and in the end (Nov. 18, 1302) the famous
Bi^ll, called Uitam Sanctam from the first two words.

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THE BABYLONISH CJ^glFITY. 283

was published. In this the e^^Hremorable statement
occurs, " We declare, defini^RT pronounce that sub-
jection to the Roman Po^Bris for every human being
altogether of necessij^Br salvation." Philip was not
terrified. Supporj^BKw as he would scarcely have
been half a ce|^|^arlier, by his States and by the
public opini|^^ France, and very dexterously con-
triving t^^Ppce the quarrel not a personal but a
natioM^^e, he defied the Papal excommunication, '
and l^ealed against it to a future Council and a true
Pope — ominous appeal, now for the first time heard.
Had the battle been fairly fought out to the end, the
King would in all likelihood have proved the victor.
As it was, it reached an abrupt and violent termina-
tion. Boniface, surprised in his country palace at An-
agni by a band of lawless soldiery led by a partisan of
Philip (Sept. 7, 1303), did not survive for many
weeks the shameful indignities, reaching, it is said, to
personal ill-treatment, which from these he endured.
Even Dante, wha has the worst opinion of Boniface,
speaks with a pitying indignation of the outrages to
which the aged Pontiff was submitted.

A few words upon this Pope : — not so much for his
own sake as on account of the part which in the
Church's history he played ; and having in view the
manner in which all the subsequent humiliations of
tlie Papacy are connected with this first humiliation,
and links in the same chain. With it, as we shall
presendy see, is immediately connected the transfer
of the seat of the Papacy to Avignon ; from this ill-
omened transfer springs the Great Schism of the
West ; from the Schism, and with a view to the heal-
ing of this, the Three Councils ; while all these evepts

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^84 '^^^ BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY.

effectually work together for the bringing about of the
Reformation. That Boniface was a proud, passionate >
man, ambitious of power, greedy of the world's wealth
■ and honour, was the verdict of his own age, which few
in after times have been disposed to reverse. The ^^
current rumour of the time, that he hastened the death ^^
of his predecessor, the pious hermit Coelestin, having
first by fraudful devices induced him to resign, or in
Dante's words, — if indeed the words have reference
to Coelestin, — " to make the grand refusal," rests on
no sufficient grounds ; and is only worth repeating as
an evidence of the esteem in which his contemporaries
held him. Of other charges against him, as that he
was an Epicurean infidel, utterly without shame in the
avowal and the practice of his vices, we hear nothing
until the struggle between him and the King became
a mortal one. This charge at any rate Dante could
not have believed ; who reserves a place in the " Do-
lorous City " for Boniface, but not in the circle to
which he has assigned unbelievers aVid heretics.

Benedict XL, the immediate successor of Boniface,
passed away in a few months, — his passage also, as
some said, having been " assisted " by Philip. And
now the French King contrived that the choice should
fall on one who had so sold himself to carry out the
wishes and policy of France, that he did not feel any-
where safe from popular indignation except on the
northern side of the Alps, and under the protection of
him whom he had engaged to serve. After a brief
residence at Bourdeaux, and then at Poitiers, Clement --
V. fixed his seat at Avignon, which, though not French
territory, was an enclave on every side surrounded by
this ^territory. There from 1300 to 1377 he and six

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THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, 285

following Popes resided. "The Babylonish Captivity"
is the name by which this voluntary exile in a foreign
land, with the servile dependence on a foreign power ^
which this exile entailed, is often designated by earnest.
Roman Catholic historians, and not by them alone : —
the name having been suggested, as I need hardly ob-
serve, by the seventy years or thereabouts for whichj
this Exile endured.

It is hard to perceive the manifold ways in which
such a self-chosen estrangement from its Italian home
must have wrought injuriously for the Papacy. It was
no light matter diat this should be thus torn away from
* those roots which during the course of long ages it
had stricken in the Italian soil, — dissociated from the
reminiscences and traditions, always potent, of the im-)
perial City. Then too the Popes could no longer make,
plausible claim to be regarded as independent um-']
pires and arbiters in the affairs of Christendom ; for
it was manifest that they had no choice but to work in
the interests and to fulfil the behests of the Monarch
who sheltered them. At the same time, feeling com-
paratively safe in that ignoble shelter, they allowed
themselves in insolences and aggressions on the ]
rights of other princes of Christendom, upon which
they would not else have ventured ; they advanced
claims to a universal monarchy which stood in ridicu-
lous contrast with their own absolute dependence on
the Court of France, a dependence so abject that the^re
were times when a Pope dared not give away the
smallest preferment without permission first obtained
of the French King. "^^

Perhaps the worst instance of the subservience was
in the matter of the Knight-Templars. How far these V^

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286 THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY.

or any number of these, were guilty of the dreadful
crimes by Philip the Fair laid to their charge is a ques-
tion on which impartial historians have arrived at very
different conclusions. It is only too likely that some
among these Knights had not escaped the contagion
of Eastern vices and Eastern infidelity ; but there can
be no doubt that their enormous wealth was their real
crime in the eyes of Philip ; that their trial was in most
instances a frightful mockery ; and, if the Pope was
indeed the upholder of righteousness on the earth,
that here, if ever, was a case for his interference.
Clement V. however, after just enough of hesitation
and resistance to show that he was perfectly aware of
the unrighteous judgments which he was invited to
connive at, or rather bidden to approve, threw the
mandeof the Papal sanction over the worst atrocities
of the French King (1307-13 14).
^ It was altogether an unlovely time; — ^as unlovely

^ morally as is materially that ugly fortress-prison called
a palace, which the Popes have left behind them on
the banks of the Rhone. The morals of the Court of
Rome may not have always been very edifying ; but
jthose of the Court of Avignon were immeasurably
worse. Petrarch, who formed one of a deputation
from the city of Rome beseeching Clement VI to
return (1342), and who had other excellent opportu-
nities of knowing, gives in his Letters a revolting pic-
ture of the place and of the things which were there
done. It was a time also sadly wanting in traits of
redeeming nobleness ; a time as ignoble as it was
unlovely. The struggle between the Emperor Lewis \
of Bavaria and John XXII., which stands out as the /

V prominent event, or series of events, during this

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THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY. 287

period (i 322-1 347), is but a poor reproduction of the
conflict between the Hohenstaufens and the Popes of
their times, which had convulsed Western Christendom
a century and a half before. All the grander aspects
of the earlier struggle have disappeared ; the aims
are meaner, the actors less heroic, or not heroic at all.
For the two Fredericks we have the weak and waver-
ing Lewis ; for Innocent III. and Gregory IX. we have .
John XXII., — than whom there may have been worse Y^^
and wickeder men in the Papal Chair, but scarcely one
that more repels every sympathy ; with others better
than John, but certainly having no title to greatness.

The deputation in which Petrarch bore a part, and
of which I spoke just now, was by no means the only
one of its kind; for the Roman people or populace, — V^
whichever we may please to call them, — fierce and \
fickle, ever on the brink of a revolt against a Pope /
when among them, could ill brook his persistent
absence, threatening as did this, permanently to divert
into other channels all the rich gains which in one •^
shape or another, through the presence of the Papal
Curia, had been wont to fall into their laps. It was
indeed high time that the Exile should cease, if Rome,
and indeed all Italy, which was daily becoming more
Ghibelline and falling into a more hopeless anarchy, ^
was not to slip away from the Papal grasp altogether; ^
if the brief reign of a Rienzi (1347, May 20-Dec. 15) '
was not to be succeeded by that of some demagogue,
who should hold the reins of power with a stronger
hand than the so-called Tribune of the people had
done. At length Gregory XI., after more than one v^
baffled attempt on the part of his predecessors to find
their way back to their Italian centre and again to root

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288 THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY.

themselves there, succeeded in bringing the long Cap-
tivity — self-chosen banishment we might rather call it
— to a close (1377).

As may be easily supposed words bolder than had
ever been uttered before, words striking at the very
^^ root of the Papal system, and leaving none of its pre-
rogatives unassailed, had found utterance during this
time; and, more ominous than all the rest, these had-
not come from such as stood avowedly without the
Church's pale, but from those within. Foremost
among the threatening births of the first half of the
fourteenth century is a book, the Defensio Pads, writ-^
ten by a physician of Padua, Marsilio by name (d./
1328), in the immediate service of Lewis of Bavaria.
No later hand has traced with a finer historic tact the
mundane conditions which first made possible, and
then favoured, the upgrowth of the Papal power;
none has searched out with a more pitiless logic the
weak places of the Papal armour. An epoch-making
book Neander calls it ; and certainly, for good or for
evil, it was far in advance of its age : so far, that it is
difficult to understand how it could very strongly have
influenced its age. Purely Erastian in its manner of
contemplating the relations between the Church and
the State, presbyterian in its views of .Church govern-
ment, subjecting to a criticism often the most dama-
ging much that hitherto had been assumed as histori-
cally certain,^t has been an arsenal which in after
times has supplied weapons to many, who have little
guessed from whence those weapons were drawn ;
who perhaps have fancied that they have found or
forged them for themselves.

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THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY. 289

Nor was it only from the mouth of this Paduan
physician that there issued words such as these,
sharper than a .two-edged sword. On the same side
was ranged another greater than he. It is, indeed,
nothing strange that in a Church wherein the corpo-
rate feeling was fast dying but, there should have
been a revival of Nominalism under slighdy altered
forms ; a reassertion, that is, of the individual of his
rights; nor yet that this revival should instinctively
have assumed an attitude hostile to the Church. But
of this revival, and of William of Occam, the soul of it,
I have spoken already (p. 271). Against these, and
as bearing the word for Rome, there were only the
later Schoolmen, who had quite lost their hold on the
heart and intellect of Europe, with here and there a
Papal canonist, who must have done her more harm
than good by the insolent extravagance of the claims
which he advanced, as though, under cover of words
bigger than ever, he would conceal from himself and
from others that the realities of power were vanishing
away. There had been a time when if Rome fought
her batde with carnal weapons, with the stake, the
fagot and the dungeon, she yet was not wanting in
trained champions, prepared to enter the lists and to
maintain her cause with the weapons of the intellect
as well ; and these, weapons of a temper as fine as
any which heresiarch or reformer could wield. There
was a time when she was not content with merely
silencing an Abelard, but sought also to confute him.
This was not so any more.

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LECTURE X^.

THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST.

We have seen the end of the so-called Babylonish v
Captivity. But there was a dishonour worse even
than this behind ; a mischief which, directly growing
out of the Captivity, was to work more potendy even
than it had done for the stripping from the Papacy of
any ideal glory with which it might still be clothed.
There was the Great Schism of the West to follow,
which, beginning where the other ended, was not to
be healed for some forty miserable years. It is not
difficult to trace the .connexion between the two.
During the long residence of the Popes at Avignon a
party had grown up in the Sacred College entirely
devoted to the interests of France, nominees of. .the
French King, eager to entangle the Church again in
that disgraceful bondage from which with so much
painful effort it had escaped. Over against these was
a smaller Italian party; with which naturally sided all '
who desired to see the chief ruler of the Church
restored to some sort of dignity and independence,
and not any longer the creature of a foreign Monarch.
Gregory XI. dying in 1378, the struggle at once be-
gan between two nations, France and Italy, for the
possession of the Papacy and all the gains, moral and •-
material, annexed to this possession ; France seeking
to retain, and Italy to recover them. The French Car-
290

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THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST

291

dinals, though far outnumbering the Italian, did not
venture to resist at Rome the election of an Italian
Pope. This was Urban VI. ; and unhappily it would
have been- difficult anywhere to find a man more fitted,
by harshness, violence, and cruelty to make a small
breach into a great one. It was not long before the
French Cardinals, withdrawing to a place of safety,
declared his election void. Their lives, they said, —
and this was not far from the truth, — ^would not have
been safe from the fury of the Roman populace had
they attempted to exercise any freedom of choice.
They proceeded further to elect a Pope of their own,
Clement VII. (1378), who at once returned to the old
haunts at Avignon, and established himself there.

Such were the beginnings of the Great Schism
which endured for eight and thirty years, and which. in
its effects has endured to the present day. Never
I again could the power of Rome be what before it had
been. The nimbus of glory with which the early
Middle Ages had encircled it, if any faint reflection of
this lingered about it still, was hereby dissipated for
ever. The great moral strength of the Papacy had lain
in its seeming to secure unity for the Church, the Pope
being at once the symbol of this unity and the pledge.
It is true that there had been antipopes before. Alex-
ander III., in the twenty-two years of his Pontificate,
had triumphed over thriee of these. Nay, the mon-
strous spectacle of three Popes at the same moment
had not been altogether unknown (1033). ^^^ ^^
false had hitherto quickly succumbed before the true;
there had been no continuous schism. It was other-
wise now. Both held their ground, and now this very
institution which was to secure the Church's unity was

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292

THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST.

the prime source and spring of its discords and divi-
sions. For little short of half a century all Latin Chris- \
tendom was divided into hostile camps, and presented
the ignominious spectacle of Pope and antipope, each
of these anathematizing the other and all the adherents
of the other. While salvation was believed to depend
on being in communion with the rightful successor of
St Peter, no one during all this time could feel per-
fectly sure that he was in communion with the true \
Pope and not with an antipope and an antichrist. It >
was quite certain that one large moiety of Christen-
dom was in this miserable condition ; for if on thj^
side of the Pope whom Rome in after times has
acknowledged to be the true, were England and Ger-
many and of course Italy, with Denmark and Swedeh,
Poland and Prussia, there were ranged on the side
of the Avignonese, France and Scotland, Spain and
Portugal, Savoy and Lorraine. I

More sublunary, but not less real sources of angry
discontent were found in the double burdens w^hich
were now imposed upon all who could be compelled
to bear them. To raise sums adequate for the main-
tenance of one Court, with all its immense outgoings,
had taxed the inventive genius of men skilled to the
utmost in all devices for the drawing of money to the
Papal Exchequer. But now, while the area from
which supplies must be drawn had not been enlarged, ^
there were two Courts, two Colleges of Cardinals, — )
occasionally three, — with all their costly machinery, to
be maintained. To meet these needs there was
almost nothing in heaven or on earth or under the
earth, which was not set to sale ; but on this matter I
shall need to speak more at large hereafter. When

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THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST

29T

to all the directly spiritual distresses of the time this
intolerable burden was added, it is nothing wonderful,
that men sighed and cried, and asked what the end
would be ; or, losing all patience and all hope, de-
manded whether indeed an end would ever come.

Certainly it would have never arrived through the
self-denying action of those from whom the mischief
immediately proceeded. All appeals to the rival claim-
ant's of St. Peter's throne, that they should take pity
on a suffering Church, and bring the Schism to an end
by a common resignation, were thrown away. It was
in vain they were reminded that the Good Shepherd
gives not his office only, but his life for the sheep. If
one was willing, the other was not ; or if both professed
their willingness, some difficulty always arose at the
last, each suspecting or feigning to suspect a fraud or
treachery on the part of the other, and refusing to pro-
ceed any farther. And so through mire and dirt the
tiara was dragged for long and shameful years, until
at last the very Cardinals, with a College of whom the
true Pope, whichever this might be, and the pretender
were alike provided, became ashamed of their princi-
pals, of their falsehood and fraud and greed, and, uni- j
ting together, consented in the calling of a Council.

There was incjeed but this one escape from the fatal
labyrinth in which all were entangled ; — namely that
the Church, in General Council assembled, should de- \
clare herself, under Christ, the true source and centre
of power ; greater than any Pope ; competent to act
without him, to judge between rival claimants of the
office, to remove therefrom, either for heresy or for
any other notorious sin by which the Church was
offended, an unworthy ^cupant, and to elect another

)

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294 ^^^ GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST.

in his room; and more than this, able to take such
measures for her own reformation and for the exclud-
ing of scandals in the future as the necessities of the
time demanded. To the University of Paris, then at
the height of its reputation, to John Gerson (b. 1363,
d. 1429) its illustrious Chancellor, and to Cardinal
d'Ailly (b. 1350. d. 1425) who had preceded him in the/
same office, belongs the honour of having laboured the
most zealously and the most effectually for the healing
in this way of the Church's hurt By their writings
and discourses they familiarized the minds of many
with proposals, which must have seemed, when first
put forward, of an unparalleled audacity, falling only a
little short of a questioning or denying the omnipo-
tence of God.

We enter now on the story of the three Great
Councils of the West, which constitute so remarkable
a close to the pre-reformation period : — ^assemblies so
stately in appearance, so impotent in fact ; so large in
their promise, so small in their performance; and
which yet, while seeming to have done nothing, exer-
cised in the times which followed an influence so pene-
trating and so vast. The first of these is the Council ^
of Pisa (March 25-Aug. 7, 1409). The objects which ^
it proposed to itself were two, but these most closely
intertwined with one another: — the first the restora-^
tion of the peace, by a restoration of the unity, of the j
Church ; the second the reformation of it in head an^
in members ; — for this formula was now upon every
body's lips as the most adequate expression of all
which all good men most desired. It was an august
assembly, though falling short of the more august

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THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST 295

gathering at Constance which was so soon to follow.
There came together to Pisa of the two Obediences,
twenty-three Cardinals, and either in person or by
proxy some two hundred Bishops, nearly three hun-
dred Abbots, with Doctors of theology and of the ^ 'S
Canon^d the Civil Law litde short of five hundred ;
the representatives also of temporal princes and poten-
tates were not wanting. The great Parisian Doctors \
whom I just have named, as they had contributed the
most to the assembling of the Council, so were they
now its inspiring soul. In the fact of thus coming to.'
gether of its own authority, it had virtually declared
that it was itself the legitimate seat of power in the
Church ; but this did not prevent it from proclaiming
the same, and its own authoritative and oecumenical
character, in a yetmore formal manner.
^ And now, this first step taken, the rival claimants,
Gregory XIL and Benedict XIII., were summoned to
appear in person or by proxy before it. There wask
no reply, for both alike repudiated its authority./
Hereupon their processes at once began : both, as
notorious schismatics, heretics, perjurers, were set with
all ignominy aside ; and the Chair of St Peter, to
which by their crimes they had alike forfeited any
claim, was declared to be vacant. But this done, the
Council committed the capital mistake of electing at
once another Pope, Alexander V., instead of proceed-
ing first in the task of reformation, and only crowning
the edifice when that task had been completed. At
once a rallying point and a nucleus was g^ven, around
which might gather all the hostilities which were co-
vertly at work in the Council ; and these were many ;
for whom would a genuine reform so cut to the quick,

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296 THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST.

whose wings would it so effectually clip as the Popes ?
Unless he had been a man of rare magnanimity —
which Alexander, who to weakness of character added
the weakness of age, for he already bore the burden
of seventy years, was not, — his one object, as the most
far-seeing urged, would be to get rid of the Council at
the earliest possible day. And exactly this which they
had foreseen arrived. Having announced his intention
to redress a few of the worst and most crying abuses
of his own Court, he presently declared that it was im-
possible to proceed further with business, so thinned
had the Council been by the departure of many among
its principal members ; that he therefore adjourned it
for three years, when it should meet again, and com-
plete the work so happily begun. The Council had /
lasted in the whole a little more than four months.

Such was the lame and futile conclusion of this first
attempt to assert some other liberties in the Church
besides the liberty of the Pope to do therein what he
pleased. In some respects it left matters worse than
it found them ; for as neither of the deposed Popes
acquiesced in his sentence of deposition, and as each
had a certain following still, the immediate result was
that instead of two Popes there now were three ; and
that which should have been the Church of God, a
three headed monster, a Cerberus, as men did not fail
to call it. And now all went back agfain into its old
tracks, into these or worse. And thus, when Alex-
ander, the chosen of Pisa, died in less than a year
after his election (1410); the College of Cardinals,
fcribed or terrified, or both, chose a man for his suc-
cessor than whom it would have been difficult in all
Christendom to select an abbr or a worse. ITiis was

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297

Balthazar Cossa, better known as John XXIIL, and
among the Popes the last of this name; none; I sup-
pose, after him caring to Assume a name which he had
associated with such infamies.

That a man steeped in these as he was, — "incarnate
Devil," as men called him,-^should of his own accord
summon a Council, or in any way come to the light
that his deeds might be made manifest whether they
were of the light or of the darkness, was most un-
likely. And yet to this he was driven ; for having
stirred up his enemies so mighty and so bent on his
harm that he had no choice but to seek protection
from Sigismund, the Emperor Elect, this protection \
was duly accorded to him on one condition — namely ■
that he should proceed to fulfil the pledge and pro- /
mise, now some years over^uft of his predecessors^ \
With many misgivings, which the issue abundandy
justified, John consented; these misgivings deepening
into serious alarms when it was further insisted that
not in Italy, with its crowd of servile Bishops out-
numbering those of all the rest of Latin Christendom
put together, but somewhere beyond the Alps, this
Council should be held.

The Council of Pisa had been a remarkable gather-
ing, but this of Constance (141 4-1 418) very far ex-
ceeded it, as it was destined to surpass any which
should follow in the number and dignity of those who
assisted at it. Need I remind you of the principal
events by which it was signalized ? They are so much
better known than the incidents either of Pisa or of
Basle that I shall be content, here at least, with their
briefest recapitulation. * The objects which the Council
proposed to itself were three : — the first, to bring the ^

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298 THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST

Schism to an end ; the second, to pass a judgment on \
the doctrines of Wiclif and Hus; and the third, to
carry out that same reform, a reform of the Church in 1
head and in members, which for all that were true -
of heart had been long the dearest object of their
desire.

For the first, so far as that wicked man was con-
cerned who desecrated the highest place in the Church
by his occupation of it, the difficulty in getting rid of
him was overcome more easily than could have been
hoped. Accused of crimes strange for their multitude .
( and enormity, and not daring to face an investigationr^'
he resigns. For the second, the Wiclifite doctrines
were condemned ; Hus and Jerome of Prague and
the bones of Wiclif were burnt: but the Church affairs
of Bohemia will demand to be treated of by them-
selves, and to them I propose to devote a separate
Lecture. For the third, despite of past experience and
warnings the most solemn, the former blunder is again
repeated. To many a Church without a Pope is as
a hive without a queen-bee, — -even a Gerson's courage
failing him here ; and thus, before the Council ad-
dresses itself to the task of reformation, a Pope is
again elected. Martin V., who was thus chosen, was )
of character irreproachable, and indeed an angel of
light as compared with his predecessor. But the old
story does not the less surely repeat itself again. The
glory of the Council pales before the superior glory
of a Pope, the first unchallenged one for more than
half a century. But he. too hates to be reformed ;
shows himself so fully resolved not to be reformed,
that, even before the Council has broken up, there is
already a revival, and under his direct authority, of

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299

some of the wrongs and abuses against which the
Church had the most indignantly protested.

He has indeed onlyone aim, namely how to bear
the Council in hand till a decent opportunity for dis-
missing it shall arrive. He very skilfully breaks up
the ranks of the reformers, treating separately with )
the several nations, and entering into separate Con- l
cordats with each. With fair words and promises
which even if kept would have profited little or noth-
ing, he dissolves the assembly. When on May 16,
1418, he left the city which this Council has made
famous for ever, — his bridle held on one side by the
Emperor, on the other by the Elector of Branden-
burg, a train of forty thousand persons, as we are told,
accompanying him on horseback upon the first stage
of his journey home, — it may well have seemed to
him and to many that the Papacy had triumphantly
extricated itself from the dangers which at one time
threatened to reduce it almost to a shadow ; that the
wounds of the Babylonish Captivity and the Great
Schism at length were healed. It was indeed wonder-
ful that there should be any future for an institution
which had gone through all the degradation which
this had gone through. But the future could never be
as the past had been. There are wounds, wounds
above all in the reputation, which, without being
deadly, yet never heal; or, if they superficially heal,
leave a lasting weakness behind them.

I must hasten to the last of the Councils. The
Papacy had come forth so litde scathed from the perils
with which at one time these assemblies menaced it,
that a Council was no longer that word of terror
which a litde before it had been. There was more

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300 THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST

than one motive for summoning another, if indeed any
help was to be found in them. Bohemia, wrapt in the
flames of the Hussite War, was scorching her neigh-
bours with fiercer fires than those by which she her-
self was consumed. The healing of the Greek Schisnt —
was not yet confessed to be hopeless, and the time
seemed to offer its favourable opportunities. No one
could affirm that the restoration of sound discipline,
the reformation of the Church in head and in mem-
bers, had as yet more than begun. And thus, in com-
pliance with the rule laid down at the Council of Con-
stance, — for even at Rome they did not dare as yet
openly to set at nought its authority, — Pope Eugenius
IV. called a third Council together, that namely of \
Basle (1431-1449). Of those who sincerely mourned )
over the Church's ills, the most part, after the unhappy
experience of the two preceding Councils, had so
completely lost all faith in these assemblies that slight
regard was at first yielded to the summons ; and this
Council seemed likely to expire in its cradle as so
many had done before, as not a few should do after.

The number of Bishops and high Church dignita- •
ries who attended it was never great. A democratic
element made itself felt throughout all its delibera-
tions ; a certain readiness to resort to measures of a
revolutionary violence, such as leaves it impossible to
say that it had not itself to blame for much of its ill-
success. At the first indeed it displayed unlooked-for
capacities for work, entering into important negotia-
tions with the Hussites for their return to the bosom
of the Church ; till the Pope, alarmed at these tokens
of independent activity, did not conceal his ill-will,
making all means in his power to dissolve the Coun-

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THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST. 301

cil. This, meanwhile, growing in strength and in
self-confidence, re-affirmed all of strongest which ha4
been affirmed already at Pisa and Constance, concern-';
ing the superiority of Councils over Popes ; declared "
of itself that, as a lawfully assembled Council, it coulct
neither be dissolved, nor the place of its meeting!
changed, unless by its own consent ; and, having sum A
moned Eugenius and his Cardinals to take their share
in its labours, began the work of reformation in ear-
nest. Eugenius yielded for the time ; recalled the
Bull which had hardly stopped short of anathematiz-
ing the Council ; and sent his legates to Basle. Be-
fore long, however, he and the Council were again at
strife ; Eugenius complaining, apparendy with some
reason, that in these reforms one source after another
of the income which had hitherto sustained the Papal
Court was being dried up, while no other provision
was made for the maintenance of its due dignity, or
even for the defraying of its necessary expenses. As
the quarrel deepened the Pope removed the seat of
the Council to Ferrara (Sept 18, 1437), ^^ ^^e plea
that negotiations with the envoys of the Greek Church
would be more conveniently conducted in an Italian
city; and afterwards to Florence. The Council re-
fused to stir, first suspending (Jan. 24, 1438), then de-
posing the Pope (July 7, 1439), and electing another,
Felix v., in his stead ; this Felix being a retired Duke
of Savoy, who for some time past had been playing the
hermit in a villa on the shores of the lake of Geneva.
The Council in this extreme step failed to carry public
opinion with it. It was not merely that Eugenius de-
nounced his competitor by the worst names he could
think of, declaring him a hypocrite, a wolf in sheep's

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302 THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST.

clothing, a Moloch, a Cerberus, a Golden Calf, a sec-
ond Mahomet, an antichrist ; but the Church in gene-
ral shrunk back in alarm at the prospect of another
Schism, to last, it might be, for well-nigh another half
century. *And thus the Council lost ground daily ; its
members fell away ; its confidence in itself departed ;
and, though it took long in dying, it did in the end die
a death of inanition (June 23, 1448). Again the Pope
remained master of the situation, the last reforming
Council, — for it was the last, — having failed in all
which it undertook as completely and as ingloriously
as had done the two which went before.

Shall we lament the defeat of so many well-intended
efforts for the Church's good ? Have we reason to
suppose that there was any true help for a Church,
sick at heart, sick throughout all its limbs7 in that,
which these Councils spught to effeqt ; supposing they
had been able lo bring this about, instead of succumb-
ing^ they and their handiwork, before the superior
craft and skill which were arrayed against them ? I
cannot think so. The Gersons, the Clemangises, the
d'Aillys, with the other earnest Dottrinaires who
headed this movement, — let them have the full meed "
of honour which is their due ; but with all their seeing
they did not see what is now most plain to us ; they,
only most inadequately apprehended the sickness with
which the Church Was sick. For them the urgent
necessity of the time was a canonically chosen Pope,
and one who, if inclined to go wrong, might find the
law of the Church too strong for him ; when indeed
what the time needed was no Pope at all; what it
wanted was, that the profane usurpation by a man of
the offices of Christ should cease altogether ; that the

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THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST

303

standing obstacle to the Church's unity, — a local
centre for a divine Society whose proper centre, being
the risen and ascended Lord, was everywhere, — should
be removed. They would admit no errors of doctrine
in the Church, but only abuses in practice ; wholly re-
fused to see that these were rooted in those, drawing
all their poisonous life from them, and that blows
stricken at the roots were the only blows which would
profit. So far from admitting this, the most notable
feat which in all their course they had accomplished
was the digging up the bones of a dead man and the
burning of a living, who had invited them to acknow-
ledge their errors and to amend them.

And yet, failure upon failure as these Councils had
proved, wholly as every gain which they had made for
the Church was again lost before many years had
elapsed, total failures they were not They played
their part in preparing the Church for a truer deliver-
ance than any whigh they themselves could have ever
wrought The Hildebrandine idea of a Church,—
Society, that is, in which only one person had any
rights at all, — this idea, questioned, disputed, denied,
authoritatively condemned, could never dominate the
Church and world, as for nearly three centuries it had
done. The decrees of the Councils might be abro-
gated, and their whole legislation abolished ; but it was
not possible to abolish from men's minds and memories
that such once had been. There needed many blows,
and from many quarters, to overthrow so huge and
strong-built a fabric as that of the medieval Papacy.
It is impossible to doubt that by the Councils one of
these blows was stricken.

A word or two more upon these Councils before we

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THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST

close. And first, — ^we are, I think, often greatly sur-
prised at the general helplessness which they displayed
in their struggles with the Papacy. One or two con-
siderations may diminish this surprise. Thus it is easy
to see at what an immense disadvantage upon their
side the batde was fought In any case the interval
between one Council and another must have been
considerable-— the Pope made these intervals much
greater, and during them he could do very much as
he pleased. Then, too, while the Councils had nothing
to give away, the Pope had almost any amount of
canonries, deaneries, bishoprics, cardinalates, and what
not, in his gift ; with these he could be, and was, a rich
rewarder of those who diligently sought and served
him ; and had thus nearly all the venal talent of the
age at his command.

Defeated as the Councils had been, they left behind
them questions for solution which gave not a little
trouble to the victors. Thus the question whether
they should be recognized as lawful, and thus 'authori-
tative, assemblies of the Church Catholic or not {Con-
cilia or CdhcUiabula), was one of an immense embar-
rassment, an embarrassment which naturally was felt
the most strongly in the period immediately succeed-
ing. It is a question which more or less perplexes Ro-
man Catholic legists to the present day. The dilemma
was a very real one. If they were Councils indeed,
and truly represented the Church, then Councils might
meet without the authority of Popes, might set limits
to their power, might depose and elect them*; all which
being admitted, what became of the Papal Supremacy,
the Papal Infallibility ; or who could gainsay the claim
of the Councils to be the tribunal of highest instjince,

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THE GREAT COUNCILS OF THE WEST.

305

the ultimate seat of all authority in the Church ? But
if, in terror of consequences such as these, the name of
Councils was denied them, by what right did the
Popes who owed their election to the Councils, and
others in succession to them, who owed theirs to the
votes of the Cardinals by these same Popes appointed,
sit in the Papal Chair? To question or deny the com-
petency of those was to question or deny the founda-
tions on which their own position rested. The solu-
tion which was found of this difficfilty was ingenious in
Its simplicity. Whatever things were done in the
Councils conciliariter^ that is, as things ought to be
done in Council, were to stand ; whatever otherwise,
must disappear; 'the Pope in each case being the
judge of what was so done and what not. In this way
the legitimacy of Conciliar acts, so far as they affected
the election of Popes, was saved.

For the rest, it was left to the ever- watchful action
of the Roman Curia to defeat any legal liberties which
the Church had gained, and after a while to annul the
whole legislation of the Councils, so far as the Papal
autocracy wasjn any way restricted thereby. ^Eneas
Sylvius,, who had been a leader of the reforming party
at Basle, showed, as Pius II., the zeal of a renegade in
the active undoing of all which he had helped to ac-
complish there. In an ominous year, in 151 7, this was
finally and completely effected.

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LECTURE XXL

WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS.

It is long since we have dwelt with any fulness on
English Church affairs. They will claim our attention
now. John Wiclif, born about the year 1324 at or
near Old Richmond in Yorkshire, had already fulfilled
a distinguished career at Oxford, and obtained such
honourable recognition there as* that famous Univer-
sity could give him, when it was his lot to exchange an
academical for a national, and in the end for an Euro-
pean, reputation. A vigorous resistance upon his
part to the encroachments of the Mendicant Friars,
who were swarming here as everywhere, has been
often adduced as the first notable achievement which
drew on him the eyes of men (1360). But there is
much relating: to the earlier half of Wiclif s career
that passes for historic, while it rests in fact on very
doubtful authority; and it may very well be a question
whether the whole story of his collision with the
Begging Friars does not belong to quite another and
later period of his life.

Be this as it may, he was first known to all England
on occasion of the demand, on the part of Pope
Urban V., that the tribute which King John had en-
gaged to pay in acknowledgment of the Papal over-
lordship, with the arrears now due of three and thirty
years, should not be withholden any longer (1365).
306

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WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS,

307

The amount, a thousand marks a year, was small ; but
the honour and independence of England, compro-
mised by this payment, was much ; and Wiclif, who
had a strong English heart, in whom the patriot and
the theologian mutually sustained and strengthened
one another, stood forth among the foremost of those
who urged, and by argument justified, resistance to
this demand. His place indeed was so manifestly
among the first and the ablest of these as to draw
upon him the deepest resentment of the Roman
Court, and of all whose interests and passions were
bound up with it Edward III., as is well known, re-
ferred the question of payment to Parliament; and
doubtless was neither surprised nor displeased with
the reply, namely, that King John had no power to
give away the independence of England, and that it
was ready to sustain the King in any resistance to
this demand. The Pope, perceiving with what temper
he had to deal, did not press the claim, nor was it
ever again revived.

The incident was a very insignificant one, and char-
acteristic of a very memorable epoch, — for such the
fourteenth century was, — in the constitutional history
of England. As iron sharpens iron, so our wars with
France were doing much for the making of both
countries. The misfortunes of France were welding
her provinces more strongly together; while the
triumphs of England, shortlived as they were destined
to prove, raised the temper and courage of English-
men, proud of themselves and of the princes who had
led them to victory. Growing more and more con-
scious of an independent national existence, there were
humiliations which they would not accept from one who

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3o8 WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS.

dwelt under the ignoble shelter of a French King — for
this was the age of the Papal exile at Avignon — ^and
spoke at this King's dictation. Add to this that intol-
erable exactions and extortions, which had existed long,
but were ever waxing worse, — for wealthy England
was regarded as the milch-cow of the Papacy, which
could never be drawn dry, — ^had very nearly wearied
out the patience of Englishmen, so that they were
riper for resistance than ever before they had been.

And yet, with all this, a quarrel with Rome, possess-
ing as she did a garrison in every land, and grand tra-
ditions, all whose strength had not yet gone out of
them, was a formidable affair for a nation to under-
take ; and could, only be brought to a successful end
by the enlisting of all the national and patriotic spirit
in the land. And thus it was felt not to be a small
matter that the most learned doctor at Oxford, the
most accomplished Schoolman of his age, of a reputa-
tion in which the most keen-eyed foe could not detect .
a flaw, should be ranged on the side of the liberties of
England. His good deserts were not forgotten in the
highest quarters; and when it was sought to bring
him into trouble for some free utterances, not as yet
on doctrinal, but on disciplinary matters, the influence
of the Court, above all of John of Gaunt, — this exer-
cised, it must be owned, in a very tumultuary fashion,
— ^was sufficient to protect him against his ill-willers
(1376). When too in the year following a still more
serious attempt was made to silence him, the Pope
himself interfering, and demanding that the offender
should be surrendered to him, the same favour, rein-
forced as it now was by the active goodwill of the
citizens of London, defeated this second attempt

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309

Presented by the Crown to the living of Lutterworth
(1374), but still retaining his hold upon Oxford, neither
the one sphere nor the other, nor yet both together,
fully satisfied his longing to bring home to the great
body of the people the words of eternal life. Out of
this desire sprang his Poor Priests. These were
itinerant evangelists who passed up and down through
the land, preaching everywhere. The urgent spiritual
necessities of the time, and the entire abdication by so
many of the parochial Clergy of their duty as preachers
of the Word, must be taken as his justification in the
sending forth of these ; which yet he could not do but
at «ome manifest cost to the Church's discipline and
order.

Out of the same zeal sprang a still more important
effort upon his part Men may challenge and call in
question portions of his work ; but as many as believe
that the Bible should be accessible to all, must acknow-
ledge the obligations under which Christian England
lies to him for his translation of this into the vulgar
tongue. Under a sense of the vastness of this debt, I
dwell not upon another debt which yet is not a small
one ; the debt I mean which is owing to him by the
whole English speaking race for a work whose influ-
ence is felt to the present hour through every fibre of
the English language. It would detract litde from the
glory of this version; even if that which Sir Thomas
More urged were true, namely that the Scriptures had
been already rendered into English. This, however,
was not the case. Portions indeed had been rendered,
mainly the Psalter, for the convenience of unlettered
clerics. But as these translations had not been made
for the lay-people, so neither had they reached them.

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3IO

WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS,

Here first was a version of the whole of the Sacred
Book, and framed with a design to be read of all. The
New Testament was naturally the first attempted, and
may very well have been altogether from Wiclifs own.
hand. The whole Bible will have been finished in or
very nearly about the year 1381.

There was a loud outcry of course. Translations
from one language to another, it was urged, in the
very necessity of things were imperfect, — which is
quite true, but not reason sufficient for excluding
them ; and, as was well replied, was not the Vulgate
itself a translation ? Pearls were not to be cast be-
fore swine ; the unlearned would wrest Scripture it-
self to their own harm ; which therefore it was safest
to keep out of their hands. But Wiclif held on his
way, and made the perfecting of what he had begun a
main business of the litde which remained of his life.
It was inevitable that a translation in which many had
borne a part, — not all with the same notions of what .
the duties of a translator were, neither all endowed
with the same mastery of tongues, — ^whatever its
merits might be, should offer inconsistencies, inequali-
ties, imperfections manifold. Here literal accuracy
had been sacrificed to the attaining of greater clear-
ness ; there a too close adherence to the letter had
caused the spirit to escape ; while many passages
through an over-literalness were unintelligible. No
one can have been better aware than Wiclif himself of
the shortcomings of his work. But other hands than
his were to accomplish its revision, and mainly those
of his faithful curate and underworker, John Purvey.
This later recension has cleared itself of many of the
harshnesses, crudities, and other smaller faults which

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WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS.

311

clung to the earlier. The twp recensions, I may men-
tion, stand side by side, in parallel columns, in the no-
ble edition, published by the Clarendon Press at Ox-
ford, of this first English Bible — that on the left being
the earlier, and either Wiclif s own or made immedi-
ately under his eye ; while on the right is the later re-
vision, which was not published till several years after
his death. I need hardly remind you that this work
of Wiclif with all its merits is the translation of a
translation ; that its original is the Vulgate ; the He-
brew Old Testament, and with rarest exceptions the
Greek N^w, being alike sealed books even to the most
accomplished scholars of that generation.

A few words on the latter years of Wiclifs life.
Twice he had been drawn into question ; he was des-
tined to be so once more. On the death of Gregory
XI. (1378) followed the double election to the Papal
. throne, and on that the' Great Schism of the West.
This exercised a profound influence on Wiclif, — less
upon his outer fortunes than his inward convictions ;
though it is quite possible that this Schism, occupying
men's thoughts as it must, weakening too as it did the
central authority, may have prevented the searching
out of heretics for due punishment with the same en-
ergy as before ; and that thus a man, the object of so
keen a hatred, should after all have been suffered to
die in his bed.

But of the effects of the Schism on his inward con-
victions he has left no doubt. When he beheld two,
who both called themselves by the holiest name on
earth, hurling anathemas each, at the other and at all
the adherents of the other, — shrinking from the em-

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312

WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS.

ployment of no weapons by which they might harm
one another, — equally hateful and equally contempti-
ble, — ^he no longer beheld in them a true Pope and a
false one, between whom to choose ; but rather two,
false alike, the two halves of Antichrist, making up the
perfect Man of Sin between them. Henceforth the
abuse of all abuses for him was not this matter or,that
which the Papacy allowed or enjoined, but the Papacy
itself. But Wiclif about this time came to another
important conviction, namely that the Roman doctrine
of Transubstantiation was anti-scriptural ; and with
straightforward boldness which marked all his career
he announced this conviction in the pulpits of Oxford.
Hereupon followed the latest organized attempt to
suppress him (1382). This found him weaker in out-
ward supports than when exposed to similar attacks
at an earlier day. Many were terrified by the com-
munistic outbreak known as Wat Tyler's insurrec-
tion, which occurred at the beginning of the preceding
year ; and, without accusing him, accused his teaching
of having helped to bring it about, just as at a later
day the atrocities of the Peasants' War were laid to
Luther's door. Then too, in the new reign, — for we
have reached the reign of Richard II., — the Duke of
Lancaster was not that power in the state which once
he had been ; and now that the points at issue were
not of discipline but of doctrine, in which as a layman
he may have felt but a feeble interest, even he coun-
selled submission. Many others too, who had stood
with Wiclif when he assailed open and flagrant abu-
ses, shrunk from- making common part with him when
he ventured to question the Church's faith in its holi-
est mystery of all.

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WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS. 313

And yet, though his adversaries were able to go far
in the condemnation of his teaching upon this point,
— none of the other charges appear to have been seri-
ously pressed, — in some* strange way they were hin-
dered from proceeding to the last extremity against
his person. From Oxford indeed he found it prudent
to withdraw ; but the two closing years of his life he
spent unmolested at Lutterworth, in the discharge of
those duties of a parish priest to which he attached so
high an importance. I may add that some of his
most vigorous onslaughts upon the abuses and errors
of his time, his Trialogiis for example, belong to this
latest period of his life. It is plain that he did not
retire to Lutterworth under a tacit understanding with
his enemies, that they should leave him alone, and he
should hold his peace.

It would be pleasant to think that Chaucer had
Wiclif in his eye, when he drew his exquisite portrait
of *' the poor Parson of the town ; " but almost every
line of that portrait belongs, as it seems to me, to an
obscurer man, and not to one with whose good report
or whose evil report all England was ringing from side
to side. It is the portrait of one who, satisfied with
reforming himself and feeding the flock specially com-
mitted to his charge, did not count it his mission to at-
tempt to reform the whole Church, save in the way of
setting a noble example to all. Add to this that it is
scarcely on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas
of Canterbury that we should look for Wiclif. He was,
as is well known, struck with palsy while celebrating
the divine offices in his church at Lutterworth on the
day of the Holy Innocents (Dec. 28, 1384). His ad-
versaries transferred the occurrence of the fatal stroke

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WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS.

to the day following, being the day of St Thomas,
that so they might trace in that stroke the just ven-
geance of the saint and martyr upon one who had
dared to find fault with the honours so prodigally be-
stowed on him and the riches heaped on his shrine.

What shall we say in parting from Wiclif and his
work ? And first, with all due thankfulness to Almighty
God that He raised up this witness for so much of
truth, we, members of the Anglican Church, may be
thankful too that the Reformation was not in his time,
nor of his doing. Froni a Church reformed under the
auspices of one who was properly the spiritual an-
cestor of our Puritans, the Catholic element would in
good part, perhaps altogether, have disappeared.
Overthrowing much, he built up very little. In that
knowledge of Holy Scripture which by his translation
he diffused among the English people, there were
good foundations laid ; but in the main we must see
in him rather a clearer of the ground than a builder
thereupon. His axe was laid at the root of much, of
pilgrimages, of Indulgences, of Crusades — which in his
time had grown to be mischievous impostures— of
Transubstantiation ; though whether in this last matter
he shunned one danger without falling into another it
is not easy to determine.

And yet, crude and immature as were parts of his
teaching, manifestly erroneous as other portions of it
were, — ^when for example he denied the lawfulness of
war, the right of the State to inflict capital punishment
on evil doers, or when he affirmed that it was every
man's duty to refuse tithe to a priest who, according
to his notion, did not discharge his duty, thus investing
fallible and interested men with this judgment about

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315

their fellows, — it is only fair to remember that some
things are laid to his charge that he knew not Thus
there is an old charge against him, one as old as the
Council of Constance, afterwards taken up by the
German Reformers with whom Wiclif — " der spitzige,"
as Luther calls him — ^was never a favourite ; and con-
stantly repeated since. According to this charge, he
made the efficacy of the Sacraments and of other
Church ordinances to depend on the holiness of the
priest who ministered them. I need not remind you
that the Church would so be founded on the shifting
sands of the goodness of man, instead of the eternal
rock of the faithfulness of God. There is, however, no
truth in the charge ; but statements innumerable in
his writings which do not imply merely, but directly
assert the contrary.

Wiclifs influence was not so merely personal that it
should die with him. He left followers behind him
eager to carry on his work. Lollards they were called
before long — a name already loosely applied in the
Low Countries and elsewhere to heretics of various
descriptions ; but which now, with the usual contempt
for accuracy displayed in the giving of opprobrious
names, was fastened upon them. His Poor Priests
survived him. Barefoot, and clad in long russet gar-
ments of coarsest material, they passed two and two
through the land, denouncing everywhere the sins of
all sorts and conditions of men, but with an especial
emphasis the sins, the luxury, the sloth, the ignorance
of the Clergy. As the Mendicant Friars had sought
to take this weapon of popular preaching , out of the
hands of the Poor Men of Lyons, so these Poor Priests

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3 1 6 WICLIF AND THE L OLLARDS.

in turn sought to wrest the same out of theirs. And
they found a ready hearing. Half of England, as a
hostile witness not long after Wiclif s death laments,
was infected with LoUardy. Nor was it the lower
classes alone of whom it had taken hold. Many
temporal lords were at least its abettors. Armed
knights and nobles would stand round the Poor
Priests, when any unfriendly interruption of their
preaching was feared. At Court the Queen Mother,
and Anne of Bohemia, Queen Consort of Richard II.,
were well disposed. Oxford too remained Wiclifite
for many years after Wiclifs death.

The year 1395 marks the highest point of influence
and power which the Lollards in England ever at-
tained. Up to that date they had been continually
gaining ground. The Bishops, who would willingly
have done more for their effectual suppression, had
been embarrassed by the multitude, and oftentimes by
the boldness, of the dissidents; — not to say that, in the
desultory efforts in this direction which they did make,
they invoked in vain the assistance of the secular arm.
Richard and his advisers, without absolutely refusing
to do anything, were evidently resolved to do as little
as they could in the matter of persecution. But by
the overthrow in Richard's person of one dynasty,
and the coming up in Henry IV. of another, every-
thing was changed. To Thomas Arundel, who suc-
ceeded Courtenay as Archbishop of Canterbury, more
than to any other, Henry owed the success of his da-
ring usurpation ; and Arundel, a bold and determined
man, had made the putting down of the Lollards the
task of his life. The Lancastrian Monarch, with his
questionable title to the throne, had no choice but to

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WICLIF AND IHE LOLLARDS.

317

make sure of the support of the hierarchy, which
could only be purchased at one price. He was pre-
pared, and his son after him, to pay that price. Laws
of extreme severity against the Lollards were rapidly
passed through Convocation and Parliament (1399-
1400) ; and now for the first time in England heresy
was made punishable with death. Dr. Hook indeed
assures us that the whole measure was far more a
political act, prompted by the fears of Henry IV. and
his lay supporters, than an ecclesiastical one; that
from the beginning of the Wiclifite troubles the Eng-
lish Bishops were reluctant to persecute, and were
only hounded on from without One would be glad
to think this was true.

This much is certain, that these laws against here-
tics did not remain a dead letter. Of the preachers
some recanted. It is a grief to find John Purvey
among these, though there may be fairly a question
whether he did not afterwards recant his recantation.
Others, more steadfast than he, were silenced, — some
by a lifelong imprisonment, some by the infliction
upon them of those extreme penalties which now the
law allowed. It is idle to say that persecution, if re-
morselessly employed and under ffiirly favourable con-
ditions, may not prove a very effectual means for re-
pressing opinions. It has sometimes succeeded in
extirpating them altogether. This last it A^as unable
to do here ; but much in the way of repression it did.
Then too, the solemn condemnation at Constance of
forty articles drawn, or affirmed to be drawn, from the
writings of Wiclif, made a deep impression in Eng-
land. Many had been laid hold of by the practical
side of Wiclif s teaching, with litde concern about the

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3 1 8 WICLIF AND THE L OLLARDS.

more purely theological; and had no intention of
putting themselves, as they found that, adhering to
him, they must now do, in opposition to the general
voice of Christendota. Nor can we doubt that the
ferocious wars, at once civil and religious, which deso-
lated Bohemia and the regions of Germany bordering
upon it, were regarded by not a few as the legitimate
outcome 6f the teaching of Hus, and thus at second-
hand of Wiclif. Was England to become a theatre
of the like ?

In the year 1431 the persecution ceased, at least for
a long time; why, it is not very easy to explain. *
Probably out of sheer weariness on the part of the
persecutors, and despair of ever fully attaining their
object ; while yet the strength of Lollardy was so far
broken as no longer to threaten the very existence
of the dominant Church. Some speak as though,
through the pitiless application of measures of re-
pression, it had quite died out from the land, or only
so obscurely existed that its traces could no longer be
followed up. This, however, was far from the case.
Doubdess its aggressive force was spent From be-
ing a power claiming Recognition in Church and State,
and in fact demanding that bpth should be fashioned
and moulded according to its notions, it had been vio-
lently forced back into the condition of a sect. With
the loss of Oxford, which had now returned to her
allegiance to Rome, it had lost its geological centre
and stronghold. With the execution of Lord Cob-
ham — "the good Lord Cobham," as he was fondly
called — its political significance had disappeared. Of
the nobility and gentry who once favoured it
some were dead; others had detached themselves

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319

from a body, to belong to which seemed to argue dis-
affection or worse. But of its continued existence, not
seeking any more to transform England at once, but
to reach its ends by slower means, by the winning of
one soul after another, abundant evidence remains.
Pecock in his Repressor speaks of having often con-
versed with the chiefs and leaders of the party. Nay,
after an intermission of more than fifty years, in the
first year of the Tudors, the burnings began again
(1485). They were going vigorously forward in 151 1,
in which year a correspondent of Erasmus informs
him that wood was dear in England, and no wonder,
when the heretics afforded a daily holocaust; Erasmus
replying with a heardess jest that he could now less
than ever forgive those who, with winter at hand were
thus raising the price of fagots.

It was probably the continued vitality and the re-
newed activity of the sect which again excited alarm.
Large and open gatherings for the preaching of the
Word were not any more attempted. The itinerant
preacher had given place to the itinerant reader, who
was never more active than at the close of the
fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century.
There were litde assemblies or conventicles every-
where ; and it might put to a wholesome shame our
careless unthankful use of Holy Scripture, to read
how precious the Word in those days was, how men
came together by night, at peril of their lives, in barns,
in stables, in lonely houses, to hear some tract which
should expound it, as Wiclifs Wicket or his Lantern
of Light : or, oftener still, to listen to Scripture itself,
— a Gospel, or the Apocalypse, dear ever to those
that suffer tribulation, or a Pauline Episde, or, which

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320

WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS.

noticeably enough was a still more favourite reading,
the Epistle of St James.. And so the Lollards lived
on: and when the Reformation came at last, these
humble men, as we may well believe, did much to
contribute to it that element of sincerity, truth, and
uprightness, without which it could never have suc-
ceeded; which yet, as must be sorrowfully owned, was
miserably lacking on the part of so many, who played
foremost parts in the carrying of it through, but who
sought in it not the things of God but their own.

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LECTURE XXIL

HUS AND BOHEMIA.

The Wiclifite movement had at the outset and for
many years after its author's death been purely an
English one. It was not always to remain such ; but
was destined to acquire an European significance.
Some sparks of the fire which Wiclif had lighted, blown
over half Europe, as far as remote Bohemia, quickened
into stronger activity a flame which for long years
burned and scorched and consumed, defying all efforts
to extinguish it. But for all this, it was not Wiclif
who kindled the Bohemian fires. His writing did much
to fan and feed them ; while the assumed, and in
part erroneously assumed, identity of his teaching
with tliat of Hus contributed not a little to shape the
tragic issues of the Bohemian Reformer's life. But
the Bohemian movement was an independent and
eminently a national one. If we look for the proper
forerunners of Hus, his true spiritual ancestors, we
shall find them in his own land, in a succession of
earnest and faithful preachers, — among these Militz
(d. 1374) and Janow (d. 1394) stand out the most
prominently, — who had sown seed which could hardly
have failed to bear fruit sooner or later, though no
line of Wiclifs writings had ever found its way to Bo-
hemia. This land, not German, however it may have
been early drawn into the circle of German interests,

2Q 3"

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322

HUS AND BOHEMIA.

with a population Slavonic in the main, had first re-
ceived the faith, as it will be remembered, through the
preaching of Greek monks. The Bohemian Church
probably owed to this fact that, though incorporated
from the first with the Churches of the West, uses and
customs prevailed in it,— ras the preaching in the
mother tongue, the marriage of the Clergy, Commu-
nion in both kinds, — which it only slowly and unwill-
ingly relinquished. It was not till the fourteenth cen-
tury that its lines were drawn throughout in exact con-
formity with those of Rome. All this deserves to be
kept in mind ; for it helps to account for the kindly
reception which the seed sown by the later Bohemian
Reformers found, falling as this did in a soil to which
it was not altogether strange.

John Hus (b. 1369, d. 141 5), the central figure of
the Bohemian Reformation, took in the year 1 394 his
degree as Bachelor of Theology in that University of
Prague, upon the fortunes of which he was destined to
exercise so lasting an influence ; and four years later,
in 1398, he began to deliver lectures there. Hus
had early taken his degree in a school higher than any
school of man's. He himself has told us how he was
once careless and disobedient, how the Word of the
Cross had taken hold of him with strength, and pene-
trated him through and through as with a mighty puri-
fying fire. What he had learned in the school of
Christ he could not keep to himself. Holding, in ad-
dition to his academical position, a lectureship founded
by two pious laymen for the preaching of the Word
in the Bohemian tongue (1401), he soon signalized
himself by his diligence in breaking the bread of life
to hungering souls, and his boldness in rebuking vice

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BUS AND BOHEMIA.

323

in high places as in low. So long as he confined him-
self to reproving the sins of the laity, leaving those of
the Clergy and monks unassailed, he found little oppo-
sition, nay, rather support and applause from these.
But when he brought them also within the circle of his
condemnation, and began to upbraid them for their,
covetousness, their ambition, their luxury, their sloth,
and for other vices, they turned angrily upon him, and
sought to undermine his authority, everywhere spread-
ing reports of the unsoundness of his teaching.

Let us see on what side he mainly exposed himself
to charges such as these. Many things had recently
wrought together to bring into nearness countries
geographically so remote from one another as Bohe-
mia and England. Anne, wife of our second Richard,
was. a sister of Wenzel, King of Bohemia. The two
flourishing Universities of Oxford and Prague were
bound together by their common zeal for Realism: —
this may seem to us but a slight and fantastic bond ; it
was in those days a very strong one indeed. Young
English scholars studied at Prague, young Bohemian
at Oxford. Now, as has been already noted, Oxford
long after Wiclif s death was full of interest for his
doctrine ; and among the many strangers sojourning
there, it could hardly fail that some should imbibe
opinions, and bring back with them books of one
whom they had there learned to know and to honour.
Thus Jerome, called of Prague, on his return from the
English University, gave a new impulse to the study
of Wiclifs writings, bearer as he was of several
among these which had not hitherto travelled so far.

This man, whose fortunes were so tragically bound
up with those of Hus, who should share with him in

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324 ^^ ^^D BOHEMIA

the same fiery doom, was his junior by several years ;
his superior in eloquence, in talents, in gifts, — for cer-
tainly Hus was not a theologian of the first order ;
speculative theologian he was not at all, — but notably
his inferior in moderation and practical good sense.
Hus never shared in his friend's indiscriminate admi-
ration of Wiclif. When in 1403 some forty-five theses,
which either were or professed to be drawn from tlie
writings of the English Reformer, were brought be-
fore the University that they might be condemned as
heretical, Hus expressed himself with extreme caution
and reserve. Many of these, he affirmed, were true
when a man took them aright ; but he could not say
this of all. Not first at the Council of Constance, but
long before, he had refused to undertake the respon-
sibility of Wiclifs teaching on the Holy Euchapist.
But he did not conceal what he had learned from Wic-
lifs writings. By these there had been opened to him a
deeper glimpse into the corruptions of the Church,
and its need of reformation in the head and in the
members, than ever he had before obtained. His
preaching, with the new accesses of insight which now
were his, more than ever exasperated his foes.

While matters were in this strained condition,
events took place at Prague which are too closely con-
nected with the story that we are telling, exercised too
great an influence in bringing about the issues that lie
before us, to allow us to pass them by, even though
they may prove somewhat long to relate. The Univer-
sity of Prague, though recently founded — it only dated
back to the year 1 348 — was now, next after those of
Paris and Oxford, the most illustrious in Europe.
Saying this I say much ; for we must not measure the

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HUS AND BOHEMIA. 325

influence and authority of an University at that day by
the influence and authority, great as these are, which
it may now possess. This University, Hke that of
Paris, on the pattern of which it had been modelled,
was divided into four "nations'* — four groups, that is,
or families of scholars — each of these having in aca-
demical affairs a single collective vote. These nations
were the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Polish, and the Bo-
hemian. This does not appear at first an unfair
division — two German and two Slavonic ; but in prac-
tical working the Polish was so largely recruited from
Silesia and other German or half-German lands, that
its vote was in fact German also. The Teutonic votes
were thus as three to one, and the Bohemians in their
own land and their own University on every important
matter hopelessly outvoted. When, by aid of this pre-
ponderance, the University was made to condemn the
teaching of Wiclif in those forty-five points, matters
came to a crisis. Urged by Hus, who as a stout
patriot, and an earnest lover of the Bohemian lan-
guage and literature, had more than a theological
interest in the matter, — by Jerome, — by a large num-
ber of the Bohemian nobility, — King Wenzel published
an edict whereby the relations of natives and foreign-
ers were completely reversed. There should be hence-
forth three votes for the Bohemian nation, and only
one for the three others. Such a shifting of the
weights certainly appears as a redressing of one in-
equality by creating another. At all events it was so
earnestly resented by the Germans, by professors and
students alike, that they quitted the University in a
body, some say of five, and some of thirty thousand,
.and founded the rival University of Leipsic, leaving

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326 ^US AND BOHEMIA.

no more than two thousand students at Prague. Full
of indignation against Hus, whom they regarded as
the prime author of this affront and wrong, they spread
throughout all Germany the most unfavourable reports
of him and of his teaching.

This exodus of the foreigners had left Hus, who was
now Rector of the University, with a freer field than
before. But Church matters at Prague did not mend ;
they became more confused and threatening every
day; until presently the same shameful outrage
against all Christian morality which a century later
did a still more effectual work, served to put Hus into
open opposition to the corrupt hierarchy of his time.
Pope John XXIII., having a quarrel with the King of
Naples, proclaimed a Crusade against him, with what
had become a constant accompaniment of this, — Indul-
gences to match. But ta denounce Indulgences, as
Hus with fierce and righteous indignation did now,
was to wound Rome in her most sensitive part. He
was excommunicated at once, and every place which
should harbour him stricken with an Interdict. While
matters were in this frame the Council of Constance
was opened, which should appease all the troubles of
Christendom, and correct whatever was amiss. The
Bohemian difficulty could not be omitted, and Hus was
summoned to make answer at Constance for himself.

He had not been there four weeks when he was re-
quired to appear before the Pope and Cardinals (Nov.
1 8, 1 414). After a brief informal hearing he was com-
mitted to harsh durance, from which he never issued
as a free man again. Sigismund, the German King
and Emperor Elect, who had furnished Hus with a
safe-conduct which should protect him, " going to the

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ffUS AND BOHEMIA.

Z^l

Council, tarrying at the Council, returning from the
Council," was absent from Constance at.the time, and
heard with real displeasure how lightly regarded this
promise and pledge of his had been. Some big words
too he spoke, threatening to come himself and release
the prisoner by force ; but, being waited on by a
deputation from the Council, who represented to him
that he, as a layman, in giving such a safe-conduct had
exceeded his powers, and intruded into a region which
was not his, Sigismund was convinced, or affected to
be convinced. Doubtless the temptations to be con-
vinced were strong. Had he insisted on the liberation
of Hus, the danger was imminent that the Council, for
which he had laboured so earnesdy, should be broken
up on the plea that its rightful freedom was denied it.
He did not choose to run this risk, preferring to leave
an everlasting blot upon his name.

Some modern sophists assure us that this safe-con-
duct, or free pass as they prefer to call it, engaged the
Imperial word for Hus's safety in going to the Coun-
cil, but for nothing more — ^a most perfidious document,
if this is all which it undertook; for the words, — I quote
the more important of them in the original Latin,
— are as follows, ut ei iransire^ stare, morarij redire
permittatis. But the treachery was not in the docu-
ment ; and no body at the time attempted to find it
there. If this had not engaged the honour of the
Emperor, what cause of complaint would he have had
against the Cardinals as having entangled him in a
breach of his word ? what need of their solemn am-
bassage to him? Untrue also is the assertion that
this was so litde regarded by Hus himself as a safe-
conduct covering the whole period during which he

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328 ^^S AND BOHEMIA.

should be exposed to the malice of his enemies, that
he never appealed to it, or claimed protection from it
He did so appeal at his second formal hearing (June
7 th), the first at which Sigismund was present. **1 am
here," he there said, " under the King's promise that I
should return to Bohemia in safety ;" while at his last
by a look and by a few like words he brought the
royal word-breaker to a blush, evident to all present
(July 6th).

But to return a litde. More than seven months
elapsed before Hus could obtain a hearing before the
Council, This was granted to him at last Thrice
heard (June 5, 7,8, 141 5), — if indeed such tumultuary
sittings, where the man speaking for his life, and for
much more than his life, was continually internipted
and overborne by hostile voices, by loud cries of
" Recant," " Recant," may be reckoned as hearings at
all, — he bore himself, by the confession of all, with
courage, meekness, and dignity. The charges brought
against him were various ; some so far-fetched as that
urged by a Nominalist from the University of Paris
(for Paris was Nominalist now), namely that as a Rea-
list he could not be sound on the doctrine of the
Eucharist Others were vague enough, as that he
had sown discord between the Church and the State.
Nor were accusations wanting which touched a really
weak point in his teaching, namely the subjective as-
pect which undoubtedly some aspects of it wore; as
when he taught that not the baptized, but the predesti-
nated to life, constituted the Church. Beset as he was
by the most accomplished theologians of the age, the
best or the worst advantage was sure to be made of
any vulnerable side which he exposed. But there

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329

were charges against him with more in them of danger
than these. The point which was really at issue be-
tween him and his adversaries concerned the relative
authority of the Church and of Scripture. What they
demanded of him was a retractation of all the articles
brought against him, with an unconditional submission
to the Council. Some of the articles, he replied,
charged him with teaching things which he had never
taught, and he could not by this formal act of retracta-
tion admit that he had taught them. Let any doctrine
of his be shown to be contrary to God's holy Word,
and he would retract it ; but such unconditional sub-
mission he could not yield.

His fate was now sealed — that is, unless he could
be induced to recant ; in which event, though he did
not know it, his sentence would have been degradation
from the priesthood and a life-long imprisonment.
Many efforts up to the last moment were made by
friend and foe to persuade him to this, but in vain.
And now once more (July 6) he is brought before the
Council ; but this time for sentence and for doom.
The sentence passed, his passion, if we may venture to
use the word, begins. The long list of his heresies,
afnong which they are not ashamed to include many
which he has distinctly repudiated, is read out in his
hearing. He is clothed with priesdy garments, that
these, piece by piece, and each with an appropriate in-
sult and malediction, may be stripped from him again.
The sacred vessels are placed in his hands, that from
him, " accursed Judas that he is," they may be taken
again. There is some difficulty in erasing his tonsure ;
but this difficulty with a little violence and cruelty is
overcome. A tall paper cap, painted over with flames

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330 J^l^S AND BOHEMIA.

and devils, and inscribed " Heresiarch," is placed upon
his head. This done, and his soul having been duly
delivered to Satan, his body is surrendered to the sec-
ular arm. One last touch is not wanting. As men
bind him to the stake, attention is called to the fact
that his face is turned to the East This honour must
not be his, upon whom no Sun of Righteousness shall
ever rise. He is unfastened and refastened anew.
All is borne with perfect meekness, in the thought and
in the strength of Him who had borne so much more
for sinners, the Just for the unjust ; — and so, in his fire-
chariot of a painful martyrdom, Hus passes from our
sight.

Some may wonder that he, a Reformer, should have
been so treated by a Council, itself also reforming, and
with a man like Gerson {Doctor Christianissitnus was
the title he bore) virtually at its head. But a litde
consideration will dispel this surprise, and lead us to
the conclusion that a Council less earnestly bent on
reforms of its own would probably have dealt more
mildly with him. His position and theirs, however,
we may ascribe alike to him and to them a desire to
reform the Church, were fundamentally different
They, when they deposed a Pope^ when they pro-
claimed the general superiority of Councils over
Popes, had no intention of diminishing one jot the
Church's authority in matters of faith, but only of
changing the seat of that authority, substituting an ec-
clesiastical aristocracy for an ecclesiastical monarchy,
— or depotism, as long since it had grown to be. And
thus the more earnest the Council was to carry out a
reformation in discipline, the more eager was it also
to make evident to all the world that it did not intend

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331

to touch doctrine, but would uphold this as it had re-
ceived it It is not then uncharitable to suspect that
the leading men of the Council, — like those Reformers I
at Geneva who a century and a half later sent Serve-
tus to the Stake (1553), — were not sorry to be able
to give so signal an evidence of their zeal for the
maintenance of the faith which they had received, as
thus, in the condemnation of Hus, they had the oppor-
tunity of doing. Nor may we leave altogether out of
account that die German element must of necessity
have been strong in a Council held on the shores of
the Bodensee ; while in his vindication of Bohemian
nationality, perhaps an excessive vindication, Hus, as
we have seen, had offended and embittered the Ger-
mans to the uttermost.

• If any had flattered themselves that with the death
of Hus the Reformation in Bohemia had also received
its death-blow, they had not long to wait for a painful
undeception. Words fail to describe the tempest of
passionate indignation with which the tidings of his
execution, followed within the year by that of Jerome, •
were received there. Both were honoured as martyrs;
and already, in the fierce exasperation of men's spirits
against the authors of their doom, there was a pro-
phecy of the unutterable woes which were even at the
door. Some watchword by which his followers could
know and be known — this watchword, if possible a
spell of power like that which Luther had found in the
doctrine of Justification by faith — was still wanting.
One however was soon found ; which indeed had this
drawback, that it concerned a matter disciplinary rather
than doctrinal, yet having a real value as a visible wit-

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332

HUS AND BOHEMIA.

ness for the rights of the laity in the Church of Christ.
So far as we know, Hus had not himself laid any
special stress on Communion under both kinds : but
in 1 41 4 — he was then already at Constance, — the sub-
ject had come to the forefront at Prague ; and, being
consulted, Hus had entirely approved of such Com-
munion, as most conformable to the original Institu-
tion and to the practice of the Primitive Church. On
the other hand the Council, learning the agitation of
men's spirits in this direction, had declared what is
called the "Concomitance," — that is, that wherever
one kind was present, there was also the other ; which
being so nothing was indeed withholden from the com-
municant through the withholding of the Cup. At the
same time the Council had solemnly condemned as a
heretic every one who refused to submit himself to the
decision of the Church in this matter (June 15. 141 5).
But there was no temper of submission in Bohemia,
— ^least of all when the University of Prague gave its
voice in favour of this demand. Wenzel, die well-
intentioned but poor-spirited King, was quite unable,
to keep peace between the rival factions, and could
only slip out of his difficulties by dying (Aug. 16, 1419).
Sigismund, his brother, was also his successor ; but of
one thing the Bohemians were at this time resolved,
namely that the royal betrayer of his word should not
reign over them. And thus a condition of miserable
anarchy followed, and in the end, of open war ; which,
lasting for eleven years, could be matched by few wars
in the cruelties and atrocities by which on both sides
it was disgraced. In Ziska, their blind chief, the Hus-
sites had a leader with a born genius for war. It was
he who invented the movable waggon-fortress whereof

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333

we hear so much, — against which the German chivalry
would break as idly as waves upon a rock. Three
times crusading armies, — for this name they bore, —
thinking with no serious opposition to enforce the de-
crees of the Council, invaded Bohemia ; to be thrice
driven back with utter defeat, disgrace, and loss ; the
Hussites, who for a long while were content with
merely repelling the invaders, after a while, and as the
only way of conquering a peace, turning the tables, and
wasting with fire and sword all neighbouring German
lands.

A conflict so hideous could not long be waged with-
out a rapid deterioration of all who were engaged in
it The spirit of Hus more and more departed from
those who called themselves by his name. Intestine
strifes devoured their strength. There were first the
Moderates — Calixtines, Utraquists, or "Those of
Prague," they were called, — who, weary of the long
stoiiggle, were willing to return to the bosom of the
Church if only the Cup {calix), and thus Communion
under both kinds {sub utraque), were guaranteed to
them, with two or three secondary matters. Not so
the Taborites, who drew their name from a mountain
fastness which they fortified and called Mount Ta-
bor. These, the Ultras, the democratic radical party,
separating themselves off as early as 141 9, had left
Hus and his teaching very far behind. Ignoring the
whole historic development of Christianity, they de-
manded that a clean sweep should be made of
everything in the Church's practice for which an ex-
press and literal warrant in Scripture could not be
found. When at the Council at Basle an agreement
was patched up with the Calixtines on the footing

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334 ^^S AND BOHEMIA.

which I have just named (1433), a few further pro-
mises being thrown in, which might mean anything,
and as the issue proved, did mean nothing, the Tabor-
ites would not listen to the compromise. Again they
appealed to arms : but now their old comrades and
allies had passed to the other side ; and, defeated in
batde (1434), their stronghold taken and destroyed
(1453), their political power for ever broken, they too,
as so many before and since, were doomed to learn
that violence is weakness in disguise, and that the
wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
Whether the Church of Rome made the concessions
to the Calixtines which she did, with the intention of
retracting them at the first, opportunity, it is impossi-
ble to say. This, however, is certain, that half a dozen
years had scarcely elapsed before these concessions
were brought into question and dispute ; while, in less
than thirty. Pope Pius II. formally withdrew altogether
the Papal recognition of them (1462); though a strug-
gle for their maintenance, not always unsuccessful,
lasted on into the century ensuing.

It was in truth a melancholy close of a movement
so hopefully begun. And yet not altogether the close ;
for indeed nothing in which any elements of true
heroism are mingled, so disappears as to leave no
traces of itself behind. If it does no more, it serves
to feed the high tradition of the world, — that most
precious of all bequests to the present age from the
ages which are behind it. But there was more than
this. If much was consumed, yet not all. Something,
and that the best worth the saving, was saved from the
fires, having first been purified in them. The stormy

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HUS AND' BOHEMIA.

ZZ^

zealots, as many as had taken the sword, had for the
most part perished by the sword. But there were
some who made for themselves a better future than
the sword could have ever made. A feeble remnant,
extricating themselves from the wreck and ruin of their
party, and having been taught of God in his severest
school, pious Calixtines toq that were little content
with the Compacts of Basle, a few stray Waldensians
mingling with them, all these, drawing together in
an evil time, refashioned and reconstituted themselves
in humblest guise; though not in guise so humble that
they could escape the cruel attentions of Rome.
Seeking to build on a true scriptural foundation, with
a scheme of doctrine, it may be, dogmatically incom-
plete, — even as that of Hus himself had been, — ^with
their Episcopate lost and never since recovered, the
Unitas Fratrum, the Moravian Brethren, trampled and
trodden down, but overcoming now, not by weapons
of carnal warfare, but by the blood of the Cross, lived
on to hail the breaking of a fairer dawn, and to be
themselves greeted as witnesses for God, who in a
dark and gloomy day, and having but a little strength,
had kept his Word, and not dienied his name.

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LECTURE XXIIL

OFFENCES,

No Church histx)rian at the present day, to whatever
branch of the Church he may belong, denies that
grave abuses, to employ no stronger term, had found
their haunt and home in the later medieval Church.
In the obstinacy' with which these abuses were de-
fended by such as were most bound to make earnest
war against them, these historians may not, and all of
them do not, find a sufficient justification for that
movement which we call the Reformation. Inade-
quately provoked some count this movement to
have been, and in the measure of this inadequacy
more or less sinful. But largely provoked all allow
that it was; and not less that a .share, greater or
smaller, of the tremendous responsibilities of this
event rests with those who stood out so long against
the application of effectual remedies for patent ills.
Of some of these ills, of offences very grave indeed
which the Church permitted, — too often herself placed
in the path of her children, — I have spoken already,
but only by the way. I must now speak of them
more in detail. In many aspects the subject is an un-
grateful one. If only we keep in mind that it is the
Church of Christ of which we are speaking, how can
we escape a sense of deepest humiliation as we record
the strange transformation which this had undergone,
336

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OFFENCES. 337

until its whole organization seemed little better than a
vast and elaborate machinery for the wringing, under
every conceivable plea, of the greatest possible
amount of money from the faithful ? But ungrateful
as the subject may be, it is one which cannot be
avoided,

I touched in a former Lecture on the endeavour of
Gregory VII. forcibly to withdraw from feudal lords
and other lay patrons the opportunities for converting
the Church's property into family heirlooms, or of
making still more shameful traffic with holiest things.
As the issue proved, he did no more than change
the seat of these ill doings. Instead of lay, they were
now priestly hands, — ^and not seldom the hands which
should have been kept the cleanest of all, — that were
defiled with bribes. The tables of the money-chan-
gers, violendy driven from the outer court of the
Temple, were not cast forth, but retreated inwardly,
and were set up again in the Holy of Holies itself; so
that the bitter epigram of our English Owen, to the
effect that men might dispute whether Peter had been
ever at Rome, but none could deny the presence of
Simon there, was not bitterer than the truth would
warrant Conscious of the charge to which many of the
Popes lay open, the later Canonists taught that what
w'as simony in others was not simony in them, seeing
that everything in the Church was theirs; so that it
was not in the power of a Pope to commit this sin,
any more than in the power of God to lie, or otherwise
to deny Himself.

The depths of shame to which it was possible to
descend in this quest of unhallowed gain had been
only partially sounded in the times which preceded

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338 OFFENCES.

the Avignonese Popedom, " Our predecessors," ex-
claimed Clement VI. (i 342-1352), himself one of the
worst offenders in this line, "did not know how to
play Pope." During the Great Schism, as may be
supposed, things did not mend, nor yet in the times
which intervened between this and the Reformation ;
perhaps they grew even worse, as is the nature of
things evil to do, — not to say that there were many
obvious reasons why this should have been the course
which they travelled. You heard just now of the im-
peccability which in this particular matter was ascribed
to the Pope. Hear very briefly how far this impossi-
bility of sinning was pushed.

" Provisions" or " Expectancies " were pre-occupa-
tions on his part of ecclesiastical benefices which were
not yet vacant ; which, if vacant, would not be in his
gift. Looking forward to a vacancy, the Pope would
address to the patron Letters Commendatory {preces),
which before long were exchanged for Letters Man-
datory (rnandata), at first requesting, but after a while
desiring, that whenever a vacancy occurred, such or
such a person might be appointed to fill it; or, in
more general terms, that it might be kept open until
his pleasure in the matter was known. In this way
he obtained possession for nominees of his own of the
choicest preferments throughout all Western Chris-
tendom. Some of these were bestowed on such as
he would favour; more were sold, the merchandise of
them being carried on in the open day, without cloke
or concealment ; and with incidents which made this
ugly traffic more ugly still. Thus it would often hap-
pen that a multitude of expectants had paid down the
price for one and the same piece of preferment — ^this,

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339

which could only be held by one, having been sold by
anticipation to many. Cardinal d*Ailly expresses his
confidence that if a hundred applied, they would all
receive the promise, all would be invited to pay down
whatever the appointed tariff might be. Hereupon it
would follow that one or another, suspecting or know-
ing how matters stood, would pay a second price, and
so procure a second Mandate from the Pope, annul-
ling all his own recommendations save only this last ;
— perhaps, indeed, not the last, but to be itself over-
lapped and superseded by a third, which, with the
significant Anteferri endorsed upon it, should evacuate
in its own favour all that had preceded it It is stated
in one remonstrant memorial that the lives of actual
incumbents, whose benefices in their lifetime had been
thus sold, and, it may be, resold many times over their
heads, were not always safe from the holders of such
expectative graces. It gives us an instructive glimpse
of what manner of men sought and obtained these,
that this could be so much as imagined.

But what made the matter worse was this, namely
that the Papacy, existing, as it was tacidy recognized
that it did, mainly for the benefit of Italians, — and such
graces, in far the larger number of cases, being be-
stowed upon these or purchased by them, — the most
important benefices throughout all Europe came to be
filled by persons totally ignorant of the language of
those to whom they should minister. Not indeed that
they often did so much as affect to minister, for they
very rarely crossed the Alps into the barbarous world
beyond ; but, remaining at home, drew the revenue of
their foreign deaneries, abbeys, or what else it might
be, by means of those Italian factors who swarmed in

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every land. , Perhaps, taking all things into account,
and above all that many thus appointed were " persons
detestable in life and morals" (so one writing in 131 1
assures us), this was in most instances the least harm-
ful course which they could pursue, and their absence
the greatest favour which they could confer.

It is here only just to mention that, even in the worst
times of the Avignonefee degradation, there were Popes,
as a Benedict XII., an Urban V., to whose hands these
blots did not cleave, and who would fain have cleansed,
if they might, the hands of others as well as their own.
It may be worth while also to hear how all this, if not
defended, was palliated and the worst guilt of it shifted
off upon other shoulders, by one of the cleverest, but
one also of the most worldly-minded among the Popes.
To some Germans who complained that all things were
venal at Rome, Pius IL, defending as Pope all which
as ^neas Sylvius he had been the foremost to de-
nounce at Basle, makes this reply, so thoroughly char-
acteristic of the man : — " Complain not of the Holy
See; complain rather of the ambition and greed of
your own countrymen ; who, running to Rome in
quest of bishoprics or other preferments, and finding
others their competitors there, emulously strive to
outdo those other in the offerings of gifts to such as
are supposed to have a^ccess to us. Those who have
the pontifical ear are not angels, but men ; and men
very much as you find men in other countries, in
France and in Germany. They do not extort — they
accept what is pressed upon them."

These " Provisions," resented everywhere, were no-
where more indignandy resented than in England;
and no wonder. The scale on which foreign ecclesi-

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341

astics were quartered on the land, the extent to which
its longsuffering was tried, may be estimated by the
fact that in the year 1 240 Pope Gregory IX. sent to
the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishops of Lincoln
and Salisbury, requiring them to provide for three
hundred Romans in the earliest vacant benefices, and
restraining them from presenting any others until
these his nominees had first been provided for. To
nearly.the same time belongs the refusal of Grost^te,
Bishop of Lincoln (b. 1175, d. 1253), to admit as a
prebendary of his cathedral an Italian youth, nephew
of Pope Innocent IV., which made so deep an impres-
sion on the popular mind of England. The fact that
GrostSte was in the main a strong Ultramontane
should enhance, not diminish, our admiration of the
firmness which in this matter he displayed ; while at
the same time it may suggest that in later times con-
clusions have been drawn from this resistance on his
part, in regard of his general attitude toward the
Papacy, which the actual facts do not warrant.

Time would fail me were I to enumerate all, or
nearly all, the devices by which it was sought to fill
full the Papal exchequer. Marvellous indeed was the
ingenuity which some of these displayed. For exam-
ple, it was claimed — Clement IV. being the first who
advanced this claim — that all dignities, benefices, and
the like, which became vacant through the death of
the beneficiary while at Rome, should for the next
turn be in the Pope's gift. But the matter did not
rest here. Again and again the net was stretched
wider, and at the same time its meshes woven closer,
that it might embrace more and more within its folds.
Thus Boniface VIII. extended the claim, so as to in-

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342 OFFENCES.

elude every ecclesiastical office held by persons dying
within two days' journey of the spot where at the
time of death the Curia might be. It was a fruitful
source of revenue. In the necessity of things there
was a constant influx of the higher ecclesiastics to
Rome; and these, detained there by interminable suits
or by other causes, were exposed, not to speak of the
ordinary chances of mortality, to the deadly Roman
fevers, which then probably even more than nc^w were
ever watching for their prey.

These abuses, and I have dwelt but on a very few of
them, were bad enough ; for, though they affected the
Clergy first, yet not the Clergy only. They must have
told most disastrously on the spiritual interests of the
laity as well, whose pastors could not fail to be mo-
rally injured by the consciousness of unworthy methods
whereby they had obtained their right to minister in
holy things. There were other abuses behind, which
not indirectly but direcdy affected for their harm, not
the priesthood only, but the whole body of the faithful;
and pf some of these I have now to speak. And
first of Indulgences.

This huge abuse, as often fares with the hugest, was
only of gradual growth, and sprang up almost unper-
ceived, by such steps as I shall now describe. In an
age in which Church censures were taken much more
to heart than they are in ours, it lay very near that
such as had come under these should be permitted,
even invited, to substitute for penances thus imposed
upon them some other which promised to set forward
in one way or another the general interests of the
Church. It is plain, however, that in any such com-
mutation the substitute must not be severer than that

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in whose place it came ; indeed, not so severe ; for
else there would be no sufficient inducement to make
the exchange. It must be exactly what its name im-
ports — an Indulgence — something easier, and virtually
remitting a part of the penalty incurred So soon,
however, as it was discovered that these commuted
penalties might be turned to some advantage in the
way of setting forward objects which the Church had
at heart, — a new Crusade, for example, or the building
of some magnificent cathedral, — the temptation was
strong to make them mtuh easier, and so to bring as
many as possible to the pardon-mart, which thus
almost unawares had been opened. It was, of course,
always affirmed or implied that such Indulgences
would only profit those who brought with them a right
disposition of heart and mind, who brought, that is,
faith and repentance. And it was taught, at least at
first, that they would avail only for the remission of ec-
clesiastical penalties, that they did not reach farther
than this ; it being only after a while that their efficacy
was extended to Purgatory. But while precautionary
statements of this character could, no doubt, be found
in the writings of theologians, the pardoners, — those,
that is, who had purchased the exclusive right to vend
these spiritual wares within a certain district, and who
naturally desired to make their wares attractive,— did
not, we may be quite sure, seriously burden them with
any conditions or limitations of the kind ; the pur-
chase of the Indulgence being itself accepted as the
evidence of a contrite spirit, and men too often suf-
fered to believe that there was no world for which
these pardons were not good. It is easy to under-
stand the extent to which all zealous repentance for

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344 OFFENCES.

sins past, all watchfulness against sins to come, were
relaxed by the ease with which Indulgences were
obtained and the privileges attached to them. There
were many Tetzels, as we cannot doubt, before the
last, and quite as shameless as he ; what was bad
enough in itself becoming much worse in the hands
through which it passed. Nor is it wonderful that
earnest preachers of repentance long before Luther
should have been filled with the deepest indignation
at this murder of souls, — for so they were wont to call
it, — and in plainest words should have warned the
poor deceived people that trusting in these they were
trusting in a lie.

There was, indeed, an evident misgiving for a while
about declaring that to the Church had been com-
mitted the keys of that Middle World which is neither
heaven nor hell ; that the Church could thus remit the
pains, not by herself imposed, of Purgatory. Before
long, however, all scruples on this head were set
aside — the domain in which Indulgences availed being
thus immensely enlarged. Nor did matters stop here.
In 1477 SixtusIV. declared that Indulgences had a re-
troactive value, might be obtained by the faithful not
for themselves only, but for the relief of such as had
already departed and were now passing through, but
had not finished yet, the discipline of those cleansing
fires. It is easy to understand what an appeal there
was here to some of the best and strongest affections
of the human heart. Who could endure selfishly to
withhold for some private gratification .that which, if
rightly laid out, might mitigate or abridge the anguish
of a parent, a child, a wife, a husband, and deliver from
pains which, as they were often now described, differed

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345

little, save only in their temporary character, from the
sufferings of the lost ?

But, as it was inevitable, it would be sometimes
asked, was it certain that there was any bank on which
the Pope could thus draw without fear that his drafts
might be dishonoured? Yes, it was answered, there
was a treasure which was inexhaustible. Alexander
Hales, an eminent Schoolman and a countryman of
our own, was the first to discover this treasure hid in
the field of the Church ; — tJiesaurus meritorum it was
called. But what he set forth as a pious opinion,
Clement VI. elevated into a dogma (1343), and one
which was capable of yielding very excellent service ;
for, indeed, the convenience was manifest of drawing
bills upon the next world, and getting them honoured
in this. The fact of the existence of such a treasure,
and of the Church's right to dispose of this treasure
as it thought best, was arrived at by the following
steps. All must allow that one drop of his blood who
was Himself God would have sufficed to redeem the
world ; which being so, it was plain that He who shed
not one drop only, but poured out all, actually did and
suffered infinitely more than in strict justice was ne-
cessary for man's redemption. There was a treasure
of Christ's merits which in that redemptive act had by
no means been expended. Then to the merits of
Christ, in themselves inexhaustible, must be added
those of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of as many
saints and servants of God as had kept not merely the
commandments, but also the " counsels of perfection,"
and had thus wrought more of good than their own
salvation required. All these works of supererogation,
as by language drawn from the parable of the Good

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Samaritan {quodcunqtie super erogaveris^ Luke x. 35)
they were called, went into the same common stock,
for the Church was one ; they were all at the Church's
disposal, in other words at the Pope's, who alone had
the key of this treasure ; for him to make over to
whom he would, supplying the deficient merits of one
by the super-abundant merits of another, that so noth-
ing might be lost

Oftentimes in Roman errors we have the blurred
reflection of Christian truths, and nowhere more no-
ticeably than here : for what is this but a broken and
distorted reflection of a very glorious truth, — of this
namely, that in Christ there are treasures of grace un-
exhausted and inexhaustible, that the Church of which
He is the Head is indeed one body, a communion of
saints, so that no member of it lives for himself alone,
but the good of one becomes in a most real though
mysterious way th^ common good and property of all ?

A iew words on the year of Jubilee, and then, little
as we shall have exhausted, we may bring an unwel-
come theme to the end. The institution of a Jubilee
year belongs, as does the doctrine of Indulgences out
of which it grew, to a period when the Middle Ages
were already in their decline, and the institutions
which most properly belonged to them were verging to
their fell The immense success which attended this
new appeal to the devotion of the faithful may have
done much to conceal this fact from the eyes of men*
The Roman Church, and Rome, the city of her solem-
nities, could yet awaken a religious enthusiasm; was
still a magnet mighty to draw hearts to itself. The
year 1 300, and the Pontificate of Boniface VIIL, which

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347

was to prove in its close so disastrous, saw the first
Jubilee. As that year drew nigh, it was proclaimed
that as many as, being in the proper frame of mind,
visited the shrines of the Aposdes, the churches of St.
Peter and St. Paul, — for fifteen days, being strangers ;
for thirty days, being Romans, — might obtain thereby
a plenary Indulgence, the remission, that is, of all
Church censures, and of all pains and penalties which
these involved, whether in this world or in the world
to come.

It was originally intended as a solitary opportunity,
or one at any rate which at the soonest should recur
again after the lapse of a century. But the success
which attended it was so marvellous, multitudes so
great were attracted to the city, the sums in one way
or another drawn into the Papal treasury or spent at
Rome were so vast, that the temptation to repeat the
experiment at an earlier date was irresistible. And
thus Clement VI., taking into account that for so many
of the faithful it must be hopeless to expect in their
lifetime the occurrence of this secular day of grace,
and willing to bring its benefits within the reach of
more, did in 1343 pronounce that the Jubilee should
be celebrated every fiftieth year ; justifying this by an
appeal to the fact that the days of Pentecost were
exacdy so many. Urban VI. in 1389 further limited
the intervening time to thirty-three years, which was
the number of Christ's years upon earth ; and Paul IL
in 1470 to twenty-five, and at this it has since re-
mained. Many as made the journey to Rome, you
must not suppose that an actual pilgrimage thither
was a necessary condition for the securing of the
spiritual benefits of the Jubilee. Whatever these

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might be, they were equally obtainable by paying to a
Palpal factor, such as might everywhere be found,
something about the sum which a pilgrimage to the
city would have cost. Multitudes actually went ; but
not a few were satisfied with this vicarious going.

A very significant commentary on these schemes of
pardon, — stopping so very short of the Cross of Christ,
and, instead of leading up to that Cross, very often
leading away from it, — ^was the appearance about the
middle of the fourteenth century, first in Italy and then
in Germany, of the Flagellants. These were peni-
tents, men and women, who, stript to the waist, wan-
dered in long procession from city to city, chaunting
hymns and litanies, and inflicting on themselves the
severest discipline of the scourge, from whence they
had their name of the Flagellants or the Scourgers.
WofuUy astray they may have been, and were. The
blood without which is no remission was not their own,
but Another's; the stripes wherewith they must be
healed were Another's ; while yet, amid all their con-
fusions, it was for that precious blood, for a fellowship
with the sufferings of Christ, that they were blindly
feeling. It is nothing wonderful that the Church
frowned on these demonstrations, did all in her power
to put them down, significant as they were of the little
worth which the sin-laden heart of man ascribed to the
schemes of pardon in which she was inviting her chil-
dren to trust.

Mischiefs and causes of offence of a different class
are yet to speak of. I have spoken already of the
claims which the Popes made to draw all greater
causes for ultimate decision to their courts. Being in

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349

their own sight what they were, they could scarcely
have done less. But the liberty of appeal which was
thus encouraged and invited threatened to subvert tlie
whole discipline, and indeed well-nigh to dissolve the
whole framework of the Church. After a while it was
not greater causes only which were drawn to Rome ;
but whosoever wished to elude or to defy the authority
of his immediate superior, did, under one pretext or
another, claim to bring his wrongs before the supreme
Ruler of the Church. Apart from the continual con-
flict in which Rome was thus engaged with temporal
princes and potentates, who could ill brook this giving
of the go-by to all national courts, she could not shut
her eyes to the other manifold mischiefs which attended
the abusive exercise of this privilege of appeal. We
may imagine, though feebly, what these must have
been, when we call to mind the slowness of communi-
cation in those ages, the long delays in courts already
choked with business, the temptation to the underlings
of the Curia to multiply delays so gainful to them, the
spirit of opposition to legitimate authority which was
everywhere fostered. But how renounce, or even
seriously abridge, a right which so flattered her pride ;
which was such a living testimony continually borne to
her supremacy ; which in manifold ways brought such
wealth into her exchequer ; and which, it is only fair to
add, did sometimes hinder or redress an injustice
which would not else have been set right ? Various
attempts to set limits to the right of appeal, to put
some obstacles in the way, profited but litde. The
one remedy was not tried, — namely to restore to the
several national Churches and States those rights of
self-government, of which she had robbed them in

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350 OFFENCES.

whole or in part ; but Rome, making this restoration,
would have ceased to be Rome.

The same determination to draw all to one centre
showed itself in the multiplication of exemptions from
every jurisdiction save that of the Pope himself. The
first ambition of monastery or convent was to obtain
exemption from the authority of the Bishop in whose
diocese it stood, to hold directly from the Papal See.
For this it was willing to pay, and did pay, a yearly
tribute. The exemption which other monastic houses
obtained one by one, and by special favour, was be-
stowed in mass on the two Mendicant Orders, —
being included in the Mare Magnum (for so it was
called) of the privileges heaped upon them. But to
others also it was imparted with no niggard hand. It
is easy to imagine the extent to which all efforts of
Bishops to exercise wholesome discipline in these dio-
ceses were crippled or wholly baffled hereby.

With this glance at abuses which had been rife for
centuries; which, as years rolled on, were not decreas-
ing but growing rather in malignity ; which, if healed
at all, were healed so slighdy that they presendy
broke out afresh, showing themselves more invete-
rate than ever; — ^we have a claim to ask, when the
right or the wrong of a Reformation is discussed, Was
there not a cause ? Let its excesses have been what
they may, the rent in the seamless robe of Christ ever
so lamentable, was there not intolerable evil to be
abated, while yet this evil was obstinately resolved
that it would not abate itself? When I say "would
not abate itself," do not conclude that there were not
from time to time those in high places, some in the
highest place of all, who would fain have healed the

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>35l

hurt of the daughter of their people ; and who, if they
did not see all, — for who could see this ? — ^yet saw
something of the frightful bottomless slough into
which the Church had sunken, and would fain have
lifted it out from this. There were Popes who ear-
nesdy desired a reform, who honestly laboured for
one. But the system had grown too strong for any
single man, even though he should appear to have all
power at his beck. There were too many to whom
the evil thing, that which needed above all to be got
rid of, was as the very breath of their life. In the
time of Leo X. there might be counted some eight
hundred officials in the Roman Chancery and Datary,
not to speak of a multitude of other placemen, most
of them having paid highly for their offices ; a serried
phalanx in actual possession, and prepared to offer
the most determined opposition to any and every
reform by which their gains would be diminished.
With the best intentions, how helpless, in the face of
the resistance passive or active of these, must a Pope
have proved, generally an old man and with few
years to live, — the average duration of a Pontificate
from first to last having been less than seven years; —
a stranger altogether, it might be, to the intricacies of
ecclesiastical affairs, or to the procedure of ecclefeias-
tical courts. Who can wonder that honest attempts
at reform were frequently defeated, or that, if a litde
seemed to have been won, all before long sHpt back
into the old ruts again ; things ever traveling from
bad to worse, until at length for a violent disease a
remedy as violent arrived ?

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LECTURE XXIV.

THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

The German Mystics will claim our attention to-day.
German I call them, so to mark the distinction be-
tween them and other mystics, of whom something
has been spoken already (p. 213). If those were
mainly French and Italian, or, to use a term which
would embrace both, Romanic, these are German
above all, and by their " innigkeit " — I look in vain for
a corresponding word in English — ^they declare as
much. Cologne too and Strasburg are their chief
centres, and after these, Basle and Constance, Brus-
sels and Nuremberg. But the men whom we name by
this name not always employed as a title of honour,
how shall we describe them? I had rather that my Lec-
ture taken as a whole should answer this question.
Meanwhile I will say generally and by way of prelude,
that the evidence of divine things which the Schoolman
found in the consonance between faith and reason
reasonably exercised, each sustaining and confirming
the other, the Mystic sought and claimed to find in a
more immediate fellowship and intercommunion with
God, an illumination from above which was light and
warmth in one. " Let Him kiss me with kisses of his
mouth," — this, with the Bride of the Canticles, he
asked, with nothing short of this would be content ;
claiming in his higher moments to lose himself in God
352

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

353

and in the ocean of his being, as the drop of water
loses itself in the sea. This last comparison, one of
very frequent recurrence, gives us a hint of spiritual
dangers which were before him, and which he did
not always escape ; . and of these we shall have pres-
endy to speak. In much which he longed for the
most, he did but reach out after that which all souls,
in which the true hunger has been awakened, must
desire, namely immediate experience of the grace and
goodness of God, an actual tasting and seeing that He
is gracious.

We have watched the Scholastic and Mystic Theo-
logy in fruitful union with one another, each in a
manner regulating, each completing the other, in St.
Anselm and in St Bernard, in Hugh and in Richard
of St Victor. As however the Scholastic lost itself
more and more in barren strifes, the Mystic, detaching
itself, assumed an independent development of its
own, and,* without intending this, a position of antag-
onism to that which had been once its fellow-worker
and ally. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
which are those of a Scholasticism ever sinking lower,
ever losing more and more its hold on the hearts and
spirits of men, are the centuries in which the Mystic
Theology is in its fairest bloom.

Never were the strong consolations which only a
living faith could yield more needed than at that time.
It was a time of great tribulation for Western Christ-
endom, for Germany above all. The conflict between
the Papacy and the Empire had revived again, and,
though not the war of giants which it once had been,
seemed as far from a settlement as ever. It had
drawn after it what has been called the Long Interdict

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

(in 1324 it began); the suspension, that is, for long-
years of all ^means of grace which the Church could
withhold ; — means which most men still regarded as
absolutely necessary to salvation. There was every-
where intestine war, city against city and kingdom
against kingdom. There was a Church so corrupt
that it seemed incapable of enduring either its ills or
the remedies of those ills. And then upon all of this
came the frightful Black Death (i 347-1 353), sweeping
away in its course two-thirds of the population of
Europe. God's judgments were in all the world, and
many made worse by them;— only the elect being
purified and made white in the fires.

There was much in the mystical Theology, this reli-
gion of the inner man, adapted to the needs of such
a time as this; much to quicken and deepen the spirit-
ual life of souls. The Church might be full of scan-
dals without ; a mere mechanical devotion might for
many have taken the place of all worship of God in
spirit and in truth ; but it was still possible for men to
retire into the sanctuary of their own hearts, and to
find Him and to worship Him there. The Councils, to-
wards which men were already looking, might or
might not reform and renew the outward face of the
Church; but the Mystics would reform and renew
what was more within their power, and what they felt
more nearly to concern them, namely their own hearts.
If every external basis and support for government
and religion had given way, they said, we have at least
ourselves left us. Within the circle of our own
thoughts we have enough to content us. There, if we
seek it, we can find order and peace and holy quiet

This, like all other genuine reforming movements

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 355

of the centuries which preceded the Reformation, lost
itself therein ; but only lost itself by finding there the
fulfilment of what it had of true and good, with the
rejection of what was otherwise. In this instance the
disturbing elements were many; and we have no
choice but to dwell on them a litde, seeing that they
are found not in those who hung on the outer skirts
of the movement, but in largest measure in him who
for genius and original power was the foremost figure
in it ; so that it only came to the fulness of its benefi-
cent working when it had on many points released
itself from him and from his influence.

Of Eckart's life we know very litde; neither the
time of his birth or of his death. For a date, by aid
of which securely to anchor him to the period to which
he belongs, we must be content with 1304, in which
year he became Chief Provincial of the Order of St
Dominic in Saxony. He has attracted no litde atten-
tion in recent years, has been put forward as one of
three, the leaders in pantheistic speculation of the
modem world; — Erigena, from whom he is divided
by three hundred years, and Hegel, separated from
him by a still longer interval, being the other two ; —
one might rather have expected to find Spinoza com-
pleting the triad. This much, indeed, is certain,
namely that he was, and was felt to be, quite the lead-
ing spirit among the speculative Mystics of his own
age. From his greater light the others borrowed their
light, and their lesser urns were filled from his.

Not unacquainted with Aristode, but holding more
closely to Plat6, nourished by the mystical element so
largely to be found in Augustine, but without Augus-
tine's wholesome doctrine of sin and of the Fall, work-

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356 THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

ing up into his system all which he could assimilate
from Erigena and from the writings ascribed to Dio-
nysius the Areopagite, but attaching himself still more
closely to Amalrich of Bena, and cultivating relations
full of danger with the Brethren of the Free Spirit, —
Eckart is not for all this a mere eclectic, picking out
portions from other men's schemes of philosophy, and
ingeniously piecing them together. All of most char-
acteristic which we find in the later Mystics, we find
already in the bud, or often in the full flower, in him ;
but in him pushed to extremes which frequendy ap-
proach perilously near to the brink of the abyss of
pantheism, and sometimes do not stop short on the
brink. What has come down to us of Eckart's own
writings is litde; while, little as it is, my own ac-
quaintance is only with select portions of this : yet this
acquaintance is sufficient to convince me that he can-
not be acquitted of the charges already in his own day
brought against him; for, indeed, in his latter years
Eckart was seriously compromised with the Church,
so seriously that, high Dominican as he was, the In-
quisition hardly kept its hands off him; — ^perhaps
would not have done so much longer, if death had not
closed all his accounts on earth : — ^but much obscurity
rests on this part of his history.

Where God dwells in a man — this is a statement of
his, — He so dwells in him that He keeps nothing back
from him of life or being or godhead, which He does
not impart ; the gift of Himself being absolute, com-
plete, and without all reserve. We are here, as you
will at once perceive, on the threshold of that deifica-
tion of man, that breaking down of the everlasting dis-
tinction between the Son of God and the sons of God,

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 357

which is the characteristic danger of this theology; and
which, when the high tides of ecstatic transport have
ebbed away, will have left no Saviour at all for any
man, or, which amounts to the same thing, will have
left every man his own Saviour.

But there is more than this. Eckart in another
place, says, " I will not thank God because He loves
me ; for He cannot leave off to love me ; whether He
will or no His nature compels Him thereto. I will
thank Him because He cannot leave off this goodness
of his." Now in judging of such language as this it is
only fair to take note that he who employed it was
plainly well pleased to put things in a startling way ;
and that the paradox is often in the putting rather
than in the thing itself. But yet all these statements,
with other to the effect that God imparts Himself to
the creature because He cannot help it, that the
creature does not need the Creator more than the
Creator needs the creature, must be owned to play
dangerously near to the edge of the precipice. No
doubt there is a divine necessity in God. He cannot
lie, He cannot deny Himself; but it is another thing
when it is sought to bring the outcomings of God to-
ward the creature under the same conditions of ne-
cessity. Nor can it be pleaded that Eckart is only
playing on the edge of a precipice, when he utters
such words as these : " A truly divine man has been
so made one with God, that henceforth he does not
think of God or look for God outside of himself."

Eckart, one has said, was a man drunk with God.
God for him is not the Supreme Being, but rather
Being. All other Being is swallowed up in his. It
needs but a very slight acquaintance with the history

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358 THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

of past speculation to know how inevitably and how
swiftly such excesses avenge themselves ; how soon
extremes meet ; and how near to " All is God " lies
another statement, " All is Nothing," being as the ob-
verse of the same medal. Eckart did not arrive at
this ; but others did, of whom and whose speculations
when we read, we are compelled to own that modern
Nihilism is a very old story indeed.

But to return. In the face of all which bears so
dangerous a meaning, there are passages in Eckart's
writings which assert with all clearness the distinction
between God and the creature; which set forth the
relation of man to God as a seeing of God, not as a
becoming God; and which vindicate an unique dignity
for Christ, as Son of God in a sense quite different
from that in which others are sons as well. These
passages are not, I think, always reconcilable with
other in his writings; but, being set beside those
other, testify that there met in him all the tendencies,
scriptural and unscriptural, churchlike and unchurch-
like, which were working in his time. And thus it
came to pass that he shared the lot of more than one
great teacher, — ^as, eminently, of Socrates in the old
world, and of Hegel in the new; who, without intend-
ing this, saw in their lifetime, or left behind them at
their death, two or even more schools of followers,
these separating off to the right and to* the left, and
severally claiming to be the true guardians of the
master's teaching. So fared it with Eckart, whom
churchmen and speculative pantheists alike claimed
as theirs ; and in whom no doubt both could affirm
with truth that they recognized much that was their
own.

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 359 y

It will be seen from what has been said that
Eckart's interests were speculative rather than prac-
tical; philosophical rather than theological. It was
not so with his most distinguished followers. The
three most eminent names among these are Tauler
("the Illuminated Doctor," as he was called, d. 1361) ;
Ruysbroek ("the Ecstatic Doctor," d. 1381), and
Amandus Suso (d. 1365). Each of these has a char-
acter of his own : Tauler is the more practical ; Ruys-
broek the more contemplative; Amandus Suso the
more poetical. Of these the Scholars, all alike are clear
of the pantheistic antinomian errors, which, — so far as
his teaching went, — the Master hardly escaped, even
if he did escape; they all indeed earnestly witness
against those errors. But I have dwelt so long on
the master-spirit as to forbid me to dwell, as I would
willingly have done, on those who followed in his
train.

In such time as remains to me I would rather con-
sider in what relation to the .Reformation the Mystics
of the fourteenth century stood. It is a question of
much interest ; for as in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries all things else were working together toward
that great event, so doubdess was this which occupies
us to-day. But it is a question which will be best
answered by a brief consideration of the position
which the Myotics occupied in relation to the Church
of their own time. They took then, we may first ob-
serve, no position of consci6us opposition to the
Church. Still they were very far from being what the
Schoolmen, at least for a time, had been, a support to
it and a strength ; nay, rather, without intending this,
they did much to weaken its authority, and prepare

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36o THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

the way for its fall. They did not make war on, nor
even seek to set aside, that vast and elaborate machi-
nery of external helps for the furthering of the spirit-
ual life which they found ready prepared by the Church
for her children. But it was plain, not so much from
what they said and did, as from what they did not
say and do, that they ascribed to this machinery very
little value, — their estrangement from it being the
more significant that they seem themselves quite un-
conscious of its existence. They do not resist, re-
nounce, defy, — they simply pass by much which they
most counted necessary for salvation. I have read that
in all Thomas ^ Kempis' numerous writings there is
but one reference to the Pope. Assuredly he would
have been himself surprised if any had told him this.
The German Mystics in another way, and again
without intending it, helped to prepare the way for
others who should succeed them. Of the rise of the
modern languages of Europe into dignity and import-
ance I have already spoken something; but what
others had begun in giving to these their place and
their rightful honour they carried further. The do-
minion of Latin as the sole language in which men
could preach or pray, theologically think or debate,
had its advantages so long as the modern languages
of Europe were unformed barbarous dialects. But
what is right at one time may under altered circum-
stances become a wrong. It had become a wrong
that men could not hear the great things of G<5d in
the tongues wherein they were born, now that in those
tongues the glad tidings could be told so well. The
famous preachers among the German Mystics did
much to redress that wrong; to throw down such

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 361

barriers as still hindered a perfect recognition of this
fact Their sermons in the German of their age, some
published, far more unpublished, survive in immense
numbers to this day.

And yet with all this, and taking the Mystics at
their best, and not at their worst, judging of them and
of their teaching by their most favourable representa-
tives, it is sufficiendy plain, for all 'history attests the
fact, that there dwelt in them no power to heal the
worst ills of the Church. When we liken them, as I
am disposed to do, to some river which, with many tur-
bid elements at its head-waters, did yet, as it ran, more
and more clear itself from these, I can imagine some
who hear me asking in their hearts, How came it that
more than two centuries were still to run before the
Reformation, so grievously needed, arrived ? What was
wanting in these, that they did not bring that about ?
To this question we have no choice but to answer,
Much every way. There was wanting in the first
place a sufficiently deep apprehension of sin. Their ap-
prehension of this — it is mainly, but by no means ex-
clusively, of Eckart that I speak — ^was rather metaphy-
sical than ethical. It was a sense of need and defect
as clinging to and inherent in all finite creaturely life,
— this rather than the consciousness of the transgres-
sion by every man of a divine law ; which transgres-
sions required to be made good, and could only be
made good by such a work of sacrifice and propitiation
as that which the Son of God accomplished once for
all on his Cross. For them this objective historic fact,
while they did not at all deny its doctrinal significance,
was very far from being that central point of their the-
ology which it must be in any theology which shall

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

permanently satisfy the deepest needs of men's hearts.
Not Christ y2?r us, not the historic Christ who having-
suffered once on earth now lives in heaven for ever-
more, but Christ in us, is for them the centre round
which everything revolves. One might almost sup-
pose from their teaching that the Lord of Glory lived
and died and rose again that He might be thus repro-
duced in those whom He had been pleased to call his
brethren.

Here again was a temptation to extenuate the sin-
fulness of sin, to diminish the significance and the con-
sequences of the Fall; here an explanation of the
Pelagian leaven from which the Mystical Theology
cannot be adjudged to be free ; for, seeing that this
"new creature" in us must be always an imperfect
one, every motive was at work to lead to the reducing
to a minimum men's estimate of the malignity of sin,
— to a regarding of it as not so sinful after all, as
rather deficient good than efficient evil. There was
wanting to the Mystics exactly that which was not
wanting to the better among the Reformers. The
glory of these last was the even poise with which they
gave their full rights at once to objective and subjec-
tive Christianity ; to the religion of the written Word,
of Creeds and Sacraments, on the one side^ and at the
same time upon the other to the religion of the inner
life, of the feelings ; of the mystical union between the
faithful and their Lord : not allowing either to wrong,
or in any way to obscure and to cast into the back-
ground the other.

Luther was ever forward to acknowledge what he
owed to the Mystics, above all to Tauler, and to The
German^ Theology, — a litde volume, one of the most

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363

precious bequests which the later Middle Ages made
to the times which should come after. But there was
that in him which was not in them, and which yet there
is need should be in us all, namely the profound sense
of guilt and condemnation, and then of a release from
these ; and of this release by an act not of our own,
but of Another, the benefits therefrom resulting being
made ours by means of our faith.

In drawing this subject to a close, I am unwilling to
leave without honourable mention the Brethren of the
Common Life ; and Ruysbroek is a point of historic
contact between them and the Mystics properly so
called. These Brethren, whcfee headquarters were
Deventer in Holland, were honourably distinguished
by the same freedom of spirit which characterized the
Mystics in the stricter sense; but they were more
practical, and wholly exempt from the dangerous ex-
cesses into which so many of those other ran. The
" Common Life," from which they drew their name, had
monastic features about it; but at the same time it
was a freer life than that of the established Orders,
and one without vows. In many ways these Brethren
did excellent service during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, above all by the schools which they founded,
and the education, at once scholarly and Christian, of
the young which they promoted. Among them was
trained the author of the book, which, after the Bible,
we may be bold to say is dearer to more hearts than
any other book in Christendom; which has been
printed many thousands of times, and for which Orders
♦ and kingdoms have contended ; — ^a book which, despite
of all that is wanting to it, deserves the reputation

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364 ^-^-^ GERMAN MYSTICS.

which it has obtained. I need not say that I refer to
Thomas a Kempis (b. 1380, d. 1471), and to his work,
On the Imitation of Christ ; — for his work, and not
that of any Gerson or Gersen, we may boldly affirm
that it is. It was in a school of these Brethren that
Erasmus obtained, at least in part, his early education,
possibly from them his intelligent love for the great
writers of the ancient classical world. Parallel to these
associations of men were companies of pietist women,
Beguines and others, who, in like manner retaining
their freedom and not coming under direct vows, lived
in communities, and gave themselves to works of
mercy. Many attempts were made by the established
Orders to disquiet these, whom they could not pardon
for living a religious life without belonging to a
" Religion " properly so called ; while more than once
a Pope, satisfied that they meant no mischief, without
distinctly approving or sanctioning associations of the
kind, discouraged and defeated attempts to bring
them into trouble.

We have another token of a reaction against me-
chanical devotions and servile work-holiness in the
spread at this time of some who called themselves the
" Friends of God." The name, blessed to receive,
seems somewhat presumptuous to take; but those
who thus made it their own would no doubt have re-
plied to such a charge, that they did receive it and
that from the lips of their Lord ; for did not his own
words at John xv. 15 declare as much ? ^They would
have further urged that the name expressed a fact, —
namely, that the service of Christ's true disciples was
the free service of love, and that such a service was
theirs. It is hard to define with accuracy the attitude

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THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 365

— }

of Rome to these ; whom it sometimes tolerated,
against whom it sometimes waged a desultory war.
They for their part had not so broken away as to or-
ganize themselves into independent and hostile com-
munities, though it was not long before many whom
the Church regarded as heretics — some justly and^
some unjusdy — ^sheltered themselves under this name.
Among these Friends of God Nicholas of Basle, of
whom one would willingly know more, stands out the
most prominent Neander and Milman and not a few
others have assumed as certain, — though it has lately
been shown to be not at all so certain as they assume,
— that he was the anonymous layman from the Ober-
hnd who so greatly helped in bringing Tauler to a
deeper heart-knowledge: — the profoundly instructive
story is abundandy familiar to all who are interested
in the spiritual development of one, the best known
among the Mystics. This Nicolas, invisible Pope of
an invisible Church, as one has called him, evermore
hunted by the Inquisition, but long escaping its snares,
passed up and down through Western Christendom,
everywhere ministering to a hidden people who
owned his spiritual sway; until at length his good
fortune forsook him, and on a visit to France he fell
into the hands of foes who had long watched for his
life, and died the fiery death at Vienne. Here we
must for the present conclude.

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LECTURE XXV.

LATIN AND GREEK.

When I have brought these Lectures to a close, and
their end is not now far off, the Latin Church will be
found, if I mistake not, to have occupied four-fifths at
least of our time and attention. The proportion thus
devoted to it may seem to some beyond the measure
of its claims, very much the stronger as these claims
must by all be admitted to be. But it is not so. We
are wont to speak of the " thread " of a stream ;
meaning by this whatever in it has motion and pro-
gress, as distinguished from lagoons, back eddies, and
standing waters, where forward motion is none.
Church history also has its " thread ;'' and, if this is to
be followed, it must be followed in the West — ^at least
during the period which in these Lectures we claim
for our own. In the Latin Communion is movement;
in the Greek comparative immobility. There the flexi-
bility of youth, or of manhood which is youthful still ;
here the stiffness and rigidity of age.

We may, it is true, urge too far the improgressive
character of the Greek Church, — the absence from it
during the times which immediately concern us of any
productive energy, of the power to adapt itself to new
conditions and new needs ; and some have done so.
Much which distinguishes the Latin Church the most
has its analogies and correspondences, not seldom its
366

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LATIN AND GREEK, 367

anticipations, in the Greek. This too has its Mystics.
Maximus, that glorious Confessor (b. 580, d. 662),
would, I suppose, take rank with the foremost Mystics
of the West ; a star of the first magnitude, in what-
ever part of the Church's firmament he might shine.
It too boasts its Schoolmen, though they are not called
by this name. In the co-ordinating and combining
into one organic whole of all the theological materials
at his command, and in the use which he made of the
logical formulas of Aristotle for the better accomplish-
ing of this, John of Damascus (d. after 754) first
showed the way ; nor was it till some centuries later
that any organizing genius in the West followed in
the path which he had marked out.

But it is points of difference rather than points
of likeness between the two Communions, and the
lamentable issues to which those differences led, that
will mainly occupy us to-day. In the crowning of
Charles the Great as Emperor, — really of the West
and of that alone, though no such limitation was in-
tended by those who professed to give, or by him who
received this crown, — the separation of Italy, Rome
included, from the secular denomination of the East-
ern Emperor was involved, however some faint um-
brages of allegiance may have survived for a while.
But the Christians of East and West still constituted
one Church; and it took a longer time to dissolve
the bands which knit them together. Two centu-
ries were needed of interminable wrangling, of quar-
rels which were made up only to break' out anew, be-
fore that quarrel came which no reconciliation should
follow.

The enormous rent in the mystical body of Christ

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368 LATIN AND GREEK.

was a catastrophe of which the remoter causes reach
very far back into eariier periods of the Church's life.
Herein it resembles very closely the separation be-
tween Judah and Israel — a separation which we are
sometimes tempted to regard as the result of the ac-
cidental clashing of one man's craft and ambition and
the youthful insolence of another : while yet on closer
scrutiny we may discover the seeds of the dissolution
of the national unity to have been sown long before ;
and that falling away from one another of the north-
ern and southern Tribes, which in the end actually ar-
rived, to have been on the very point of arriving
many times before. Still less can the Schism of which
we are now speaking be said to have come by sur-
prise, or to be traceable to causes fortuitous and un-
looked for. The surprise for each thoughtful student
of Church history must be rather that the fatal mo-
ment did not much sooner arrive, — that the external
communion had survived so long. For indeed it is
hardly too much to say that this disruption lay involved
in the distinct and diverging characteristics of the
Greek and the Roman. So soon as ever the love of
many had waxed cold, and that grace which alone
knits men into one, and reconciles national distinc-
tions in a higher unity of the Spirit, had ceased effect-
ually to work, it was almost inevitable that a breach —
it might be a little sooner, or it might be a little later
— should follow.

This divergence between the Greek and Latin mind
had not failed to make itself felt even while East and
West were still in unbroken communion. It had done
so in manifold ways ; perhaps in none more strikingly
than in the different character of the disputes which

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LATIN AND GREEK. 369

agitated the one branch of the Church and the other.
In the East the disputes turned all upon questions of
high speculative theology : — ^the relation of the Son to
the Father ; whether there were in Christ two Persons,
or only two Natures, a human and a divine ; how far
and in what ways these Natures mutually acted upon
and modified one another ; whether the recognition of
them did not draw after it an obligation to recognize
in Him two Wills, harmonious indeed, but still distinct ;
with other questions moving in the region of transcen-
dental theology^-questions of profoundest importance,
but some of them apparently, though not in reality, re-
mote from our practical Christian life ; and nearly all
of them pushed by Greek controversialists into need-
less subtleties and refinements. But while the Greek
Church was the principal sphere of these discussions,
often scarcely heard of beyond it, or, if heard of,
awaking no lively interest, — ^sometimes incapable of
being so much as stated in the Latin language ; the
West also had questions of its own, which were eagerly
debated by it, but from which the Greeks in their turn
stood aloof, as not seriously affected by them. To the
Greek had in the main belonged the Arian and Nesto-
rian, altogether the Monophysite and Monothelite — all
that had to do with God as He subsists in Himself, or
in hypostatic union with man ; while the Pelagian con-
troversy, turning on the mighty antithesis between sin
and grace, on the question how far man is fallen, and
what helps he needs to set him upon his feet again, be-
longed exclusively to the West In the West too were
brought to a definite issue practical questions of
Church discipline, as for instance, the conditions under
which the baptism of heretics should be allowed to

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370 LATIN AND GREEK.

stand good, with other questions of a like kind. Keep-
ing all this in view, it is both interesting and instructive
to note the different blazon and boast of the one Com-
munion and of the other; the Greek taking for its
highest honour that it is the " Holy Orthodox Church,"
the Latin that it is the " Holy Catholic Church ;" in
other words, the one that its speculation is right, the
other that its dominion is universal. How much
which from the first was nearest to the heart severally
of Greek and Latin utters itself here.

In enumerating the preparations for dissension, and
in the end for division, we must not omit the broad
distinction of language^ When indeed Constantine
transferred the seat of empire to the city which he
called by his own name, the majesty of Rome de-
manded that the language which Romans spoke
should still be retained as the language of the Court,
of the legal tribunals, and of the public edicts, how-
ever Greek translations might sometimes be ap-
pended to these ; and it was doubtless Constantine's
intention and expectation that Latin should continue
the spoken language of the New Rome which he had
founded. But this could not be. The barbarous dia-
lects of Spain and Gaul might give way before the
Latin ; but Greek, which displaces other languages, is
itself displaced by none. Constantinople before very
long became a thoroughly Greek city, — ^the capital of
a thoroughly Greek Empire, — ^with a Greek-speaking
population, who indeed were willing to call themselves
Romans and their language Romaic, but who would
advance no further than this. The dream that New
Rome might be the centre of the Latin no less than
the Greek world, after some faint approaches to fulfil-

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lA TIN AND GREEK. 371

ment in the days of Justinian (501-565), for ever
passed away.

It is not easy to overrate the extent to which this
difference in language wrought in preparing the way
for a disruption, or in making it permanent when it
had once arrived. Nothing perhaps so knits men's
hearts together as having common objects of affection
and honour. But it thus came to pass that the illustri-
ous fathers and teachers of one half of the Church
were almost or altogether strangers to men of the
other. In a bitter writing of a Greek controversialist
put forth just before the final breach, he complains that
the famous Doctors of the East, — Athanasius and Basil
and Chrysostom and the Gregories, — so far from be-
ing esteemed saints, were held in no reputation or re-
verence at all by the Westerns. These, it is true,
though this would not have mended matters, might
have retorted with perfect truth that the standard-
bearers of their faith, — a Cyprian, an Ambrose, a
Jerome, an Augustine, were as litde honoured in the
East, were as completely unknown even to their very
names. And this was true, with only a partial excep-
tion in favour of Gregory the Great, whose work On
the Pastoral Care, and his Dialogues, had been trans-
lated into Greek ; his day also being held in honour
in the East

The Greek Church with its unbroken traditions;
with the treasures of ancient learning which it held in
its keeping ; with a theological literature preceding by
two centuries any that the Latin could boast ; having
determined in Councils where hardly a Latin Bishop
was present all the leading theological questions that
had risen up, and embodied these determinations in a

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372 LATIN AND GREEK.

Creed to which, no Latin had contributed a syllable ; —
this Greek Church, that had done so much, looked
down on the Latin as on a Church of barbarians. But
the Latin had what was far better for present service
than all that dead material, than all that consciousness
of having accomplished mighty things in times which
were gone by. It had the stirrings of a new life with-
in it The past might belong to others ; the present
and the future it felt to be its own.

The very different results of the Invasion 'by tlie
Northern tribes, as this invasion affected severally the
Greek and Latin Communions, did much to shape the
fortunes of the one and of the other. That immense
flood of the nations which overwhelmed the West, but
overwhelmed it only as the Nile with its fertilizing
waters overwhelms Egypt, brought the Greek Church
also into imminent danger and distress ; but did not
swallow it up. Overliving the peril, it travels on in
the same tracks as before. There is for it no breach
of continuity, no new beginning ; only a prolongation
of the old ; it leaves ever farther behind the days of
youthful freshness and strength. The rejuvenescence
which the West found, the East had oiissed. Taking
" Middle Ages " not as a mere chronological term, but
as marking off certain centuries with distinguishing fea-
tures of their own, — for the Greek Church, as I think
I have observed already, there were no Middle Ages ;
and when we are tempted to judge harshly of those
Ages, it may be sometimes well to ask ourselves
whether we would willingly be as that Eastern Church
is ; whether Modern Europe could advantageously
have done without the rough, but bracing discipline to
which in those Ages it was submitted.

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LATIN AND GREEK. 373

I have traced some of the remoter, let me mention
now some nearer and more patent causes of disunion.
Quarrels as to the limits of jurisdiction there were,
but these I pass by. Touching more closely the hearts
of men were certain divergences in doctrine and in,
practice which had either existed from the beginning
or grown up by degrees, and which served to draw
more sharply still the line of unfriendly demarcation
between East and West ; some of these so slight and
pitiful that, as causes to divide great Christian commu-
nities from one another, one is almost ashamed to
name them ; but 6f which a few require to be named.
Thus the Greeks brought a whole list of charges
against the Latins, as that they fasted on Saturdays,
that they made the sign of the Cross amiss, that their
priests shaved the beard, that they used unleavened
bread in the Holy Eucharist, that they did not abstain
from things strangled and from blood. Of these and
other like differences in ritual one would willingly be-
lieve that, unless deeper grounds of estrangement had
been behind, they would not have been pressed as
they were, nor made to contribute their share to the
breaking of the bond of peace between those whom
Christ had bidden to be one.

Even that which showed, at first sight, as so im-
mense a divergence between the doctrine of Latins
and Greeks was not, after due explanations made, a
difference so touching the foundations of the faith as
to require that those who were divided upon it should
refuse to hold communion with one another. This
much all " sons of peace " acknowledge now ; while
not a few go much farther, and are sure that if only
the contending parties would dispassionately consider

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374

LATIN AND GREEK.

each other's mode of speech, they would find that no
difference existed between them, — that, while using dif-
ferent language, they intended the same thing. That
the Holy Ghost proceeds or issues from the Father
and the Son, had been always the prevailing faith of the
Western Church; even as it was the strongest convic-
tion of all its best theologians that any statement
short of this, any which should leave the Son and the
Spirit with no other relation to one another except
that of their common relation to the Father, would
imperil the entire doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which
indeed only found its completion herein. To have
withheld this prerogative from the Son would have
called in question his equal Deity; and the long strug-
gle with the Arians had brought this home to the
minds of men, above all in Spain, where the struggle
had been the most terrible. It was there, at the Coun-
cil of Toledo (589), that in the Nicene Creed to the
words " I believe in the Holy Ghost, .... who pro-
ceedeth from the Father/' were added the words " and
from the Son." Many who embraced this truth with
their whole hearts were yet offended at what was thus
done, above all at the manner of its doing. So early
as the time of Charles the Great and Alcuin there
were serious misgivings, not as to the doctrine ex-
pressed by the Filioqtiey but in regard of the introduc-
tion into the Creed, by one branch of the Church only,
of words so important, and the making of them thus
an article of faith; nor did there want earnest deliber-
ations whether they should not be withdrawn. It
was felt, however, by many that it would be one thing
never to have introduced the words; but quite another,
after they had been introduced, to withdraw them ;

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LATIN AND GREEK.

375

while others more boldly defended the addition ; and
in the end nothing was done. Meanwhile the Greeks,
who only after a time had their attention drawn to the
interpolated clause, were deeply offended ; — offended
at any change made in the Church's symbols by one
portion only of the Church ; and, engaged as they
were in the battle for the truth against the dualistic
heresies of the Eastern Manichaeans, still more of-
fended at the allowance thus given, as they said, to
two originating fountains of Deity, or, as they charged
the statement with implying, to a duality of Godhead.
Let it be taught — for with this as many as were not
seeking occasions of strife declared themselves con-
tent, — that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father
by the Son ; but that the Fadier is the one Beginning,
Cause, and Source of Deity.

And yet this question of the single or double Pro-
cession, giving while it did a doctrinal basis to the
antagonism between East and West, was very far
from being that which most effectually rent them
asunder. There was one point of difference which did
far more for this; one claim which Rome was resolved
that Constantinople should admit, and which Constan-
tinople was resolved never to admit — the claim, that
is, of the Roman Pontiff to be recognized as supreme
Arbiter, to whom every greater cause must be brought
for final decision. The Churches of the West, among
which that of Rome towered as the sole apostolic,
might learn little by little to acquiesce in such preten-
sions ; but not so the Eastern, and least of all that of
Constantinople. If the Bishop of old Rome would
endure no equal, the Patriarch of Constantinople, fall-
ing back on the Council of Chalcedon and its recogni-

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376 LATIN AND GREEK.

tion of his equal dignity, would tolerate no superior ;
and the more the usurping Roman Bishop extended
his rule over the Churches of the West, and revealed
the autocratic character of that rule, the more re-
solved were those of the East, Constantinople leading
the way, to resist every attempt to place a like yoke
upon their necks. On other points a compromise
was possible. An explanation might remove a theo-
logical difficulty ; but it could do nothing here.

If the strain and stress of the approaching separa-
tion relaxed a little in the tenth century, it revived
in strength in the eleventh; and in this the final catas-
trophe arrived. A violent writing on the part of the
Greek Patriarch, Michael Cerularius (1053), was re-
plied to by one as violent on the part of the Pope.
The Papal Legates at Constantinople could procure
no satisfaction from the Patriarch tliere ; and on July
16, 1054, they laid an act of excommunication, well
charged with anathemas against the Patriarch, on the
high altar of St. Sophia. This was not, indeed, a state
of things altogether novel, for already during the
Monophysite controversy there had been a suspension
of intercourse between East and West for thirty-five
years — from 484 to 519. Nothing is so easy as curs-
ing, and the Greek Patriarch retorted with anthemas
against the Pope^ the other Oriental Patriarchs mak-
ing common cause with him ; and thus the Schism
was at length consummated, which now after more
than eight centuries shows, at least as between Latin
and Greek, no tokens of abatement ; and which, more
than all other causes combined, has delivered the fair-
est regions of the East, once the most favoured seats
of the Church, to that bastard faith of Islim, standing

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LATIN AND GREEK. 377

where it ought not, even there where, except for the
sins of Christians, it never would have stood.

And yet within fifty years from the date of the
Schism there began the first of a long series of
events which, extending over nearly two hundred
years, might have seemed to open in a wonderful
manner a door of reconciliation and way of peace.
How could the Crusades fail in working a happy
work, and in drawing again to one another, by the
bonds of such mighty benefits conferred and such
mighty benefits received, the hearts which had been
for a while by various unhappy chances estranged
from one another ? So it might, have been hoped.
The Crusades had in effect an altogether opposite re-
sult There was too often insolent violence on the
part of the strong ; tfeacherous intrigue on the part
of the weak ; and these efforts for the deliverance of
the East, even when made in good faith, only served
to increase the exasperation, to separate from one an-
other by mutual suspicions, and ere long by the sense
of mutual injuries, the helpers and the holpen more
widely than ever.

Most effectual of all for the defeating of any better
hopes which such alliances between East and West
might have encouraged was that disgraceful episode
which the Crusades oflTered — namely the temporary
setting up of a Latin Empire at Constantinople. This
Empire, under sentence of death from the beginning,
lasted little more than half a century (i 204-1 262);
but what a legacy of burning hate it must have left
behind it, as the Greeks treasured up in their memories
and revolved in their hearts the wrongs and the rapine,
the desecrated churches, the profanation of all ac-

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378 LATIN AND GREEK.

counted by them the most sacred, the insults and out-
rages innumerable, which during this time their Latin
oppressors had with so prodigal a wantonness heaped
on them and on their faith. Innocent III. may have
flattered himself that by sanctioning and allowing, as
in the end he did sanction and allow, that perfidious
transaction, the seizure of Constantinople by the
armies of the West, he was helping forward the re-
union of the Churches which was so near to his heart.
He was indeed making that reunion, which anyhow
was hard, many times harder ; causing it for centuries
which have not yet run their full course, to be impos-
sible.

It was long, however, before this impossibility was
recognized by those in the high places either of the
East or the West. There were from time to time
negotiations for the bringing of such a reunion to
pass, and on both sides motives which impelled to this.
Thus, doubdess, it would have proved most grateful to
the arrogance of Rome, if only she could add to the
number of her vassals the obstinate rival who had con-
tested her superiority so long. Nor is it less certain
that the Byzantine Court, every day more hardly
pressed by the Ottomans, was on various occasions
sincerely anxious to arrive at such terms of reconcilia-
tion as should place the armies of Western Christen-
dom at its service. This, however, was never more
than a movement of the Court and, it might be, of a
few courtly prelates and an obsequious Patriarch, ad-
vanced very probably for this very end. Terms of
* agreement might be come to ; — they were so more than
once, at the Council of Lyons (1274), and again at that
of Florence (1439) : but no further advance was made.

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LATIN AND GREEK. 379

On this last occasion the Greek Emperor, John VIL
PalsBologus, had himself accompanied his theologians
on their mission to the West ; and he and they, after
draining deeply there the cup of humiliation, returned
home bringing a setdement with them. Dictated by
the stronger p?irty, this was little else than a thinly
veiled surrender by the Greeks of all which was in
dispute. Its conditions were" no sooner known than
they were indignantly repudiated by the vast body of
clergy and laity. All who had any hand in arranging
them, all the "Latin-minded" as they were called, —
and there could be no worse charge, — were denounced
as traitors ; Metrophanes the Patriarch, his name
changed by popular hatred to Metrophonus, or The
Matricide, being counted the worst traitor of all. And
now the latest glimpse of hope that aid might be ob-
tained from the West disappeared ; and in less than
fourteen years Constantinople, after the heroic defence
of an Emperor who knew when and how to die, was
taken (May 29, 1453); and the church of Justinian,
desecrated to a mosque, has remained such to the pre-
sent hour. Some two hundred years earlier the
mosque of Cordova had been transformed into a
Christian church ; but here was now a very lament-
able redressing of the balance.

A very few words more before we leave this part
of our subject As the Western Church secured to
itself a magnificent future by taking moral and spirit-
ual possession of those Teutonic races which in the
Providence of God had been brought within the
sphere of its influence, so the Eastern recognized as
its mission the conversion of the Slavonic tribes ; and

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38o ^A TIN AND GREEK.

found in them, and in the imparting of the Gospel to
them, security for its own future, — a pledge that how-
ever the Empire of the East might perish, the Church
of the East should not perish with it.. Admitting, as
we must admit, that this Church's missionary zeal fell
below that of the Western, still it was very far from
neglecting altogether the duty of imparting to others
that precious truth of which it was itself the keeper.
It thus came to pass that long before the overwhelm-
ing catastrophe of the fifteenth century, a nation des-
tined to have an immense share in moulding the future
history of the world had received from Constantinople
the seeds of the Christian faith, — not indeed of that
faith in all its primitive purity, for none can give bet-
ter than they themselves possess; but what it had, the
Greek Church had freely given. I need hardly say
that I refer to Russia. Everywhere in the East there
are ghosts of a greatness which has forever vanished
away. But while so much there belongs to an unre-
turning past, here are a nation and a Church, fresh
and young, and only now beginning to play their part
in the world's story. With Russia, and with the for-
tunes of Russia, the future of Eastern Christianity is
manifestly bound up. That this future is destined ta
be a remarkable one it is impossible to doubt.

You must learn from others the circumstances
which led to the conversion of Vladimir, to whom the
Russian Church looks back and looks up as its foun-
der (980). I can do no more than call your attention
to the far-reaching significance of that event; and this,
whether we contemplate it as the drawing of Russia
into Christendom, or more particularly as the drawing
of it into Eastern Christendom. If in far-reaching

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LATIN AND GREEK. 381

world-historic importance that conversion falls behind
the conversion of Clovis, it is very litde wherein it
falls behind ; and perhaps the future may declare that
in the remoter consequences which it entailed, it did
not fall a whit behind. Even without Russia and the
moral and material forces of Russia at its back, the
" Orthodox " Church would still be a power in the
ecclesiastical and theological world. With Russia it is
a power and a great one, in the political world as
well, and, if the signs of the times do not gready de-
ceive, every day will show this the more plainly.

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LECTURE XXVI.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING,

When we brand a long period of history, sometimes
the whole medieval time, with the tide of the Dark
Ages, there is a large amount of injustice in this
language ; just as, when we celebrate a Revival of
Learning, the image which suggests the phrase may
very easily be urged too far. A revival is a re-
turning to life of that which was dead, or which
seemed dead. But the activities of the human mind
were by no means dead, nor yet in a state of sus-
pended animation during those times; neither were
the helps to learning so few and insufficient, least
of all during the later Middle Ages, nor the num-
ber who had really profited by these so small, as
is often taken for granted. Many classical authors
of Greece and Rome, whose writings were then, as
they will always remain, the most efficient instruments
of intellectual culture, had never been lost sight of in
the West ; the Greek, it is true, being only accessible
by means of imperfect translations. That ancient
world of which these spoke was known, not indeed
with the fulness and accuracy wherewith it is possible
to know it now, but much better than is generally
supposed. Already in the fourteenth century Dante
(b. 1265, d. 1 321) and Petrarch (b. 1304, d. 1374) had
done much to extend a familiarity with the best Latin
382

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THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 383

poets; and Boccaccio (b. 131 3, d. 1375) something for
awakening a wider interest in the masterpieces of
Greek literature ; so that this Revival of which we are
wont to speak as the glory of the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries was by no means a resurrection of
classical learning from the grave, nor even as an
awakening of it from a trance. This awakening had
already taken place.

But with all these, qualifications made, the signifi-
cance of what was then coming to pass, its bearing on
the fortunes of the Church, must by no means be
slighted or overlooked. It was not as the first spring,
succeeding upon a long winter sleep ; for that long
winter sleep had been broken long ago ; but it was a
fuller outburst of the buds and blossoms in a more
genial time. Many circumstances wrought together
to give exactly at this epoch a new impulse to learn-
ing, to the study above all of Greek and Latin anti-
quity. Books, as I have said, were not so rare* in the
later Middle Ages as we sometimes fancy ; but, ad-
mitting this, the Invention of Printing (about 1440) —
a new gift of tongues we might be tempted to call it,
if only it had been always turned to worthy uses — ^lent
wings to knowledge, put within the reach of hundreds
and presendy of thousands what had hitherto been
within the reach but of two or of three.

Nor were there wanting any longer the living teach-
ers and interpreters of that language and literature of
Greece, which could least have endured the absence
of these. It is true that in the cloisters of Calabria,
the old Magna Graecia, acquaintance with Greek had
never quite died out; but the monks there had done
litde or nothing to spread the knowledge of it beyond

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384 '^^^ REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

their own walls. Now, however, two events, these
two indeed most closely connected with one another,
brought about a large accession of efficient teachers.
The first was the Council of Florence (1439). I have ,
already called your attention from another point of
view to this latest endeavour to bring about a recon-
ciliation of East and West, and to the motives out of
which that endeavour sprung. It failed, as all previ-
ous attempts of a like kind had done ; but the negoti-
ation had brought many of the most learned Greek
theologians and scholars to Italy, of whom some con-
formed to the Latin Communion and remained. Bes-
sarion. Archbishop of Nicaea, afterwards a Roman
Cardinal, and twice very nearly Pope, was perhaps the
most illustrious of those who thus sought shelter be-
times from the coming storm. Others also there were
who did the same ; and when, a few years later, the
catastrophe actually arrived which the healing of the
Schism should have averted, and Constantinople fell
at last before the arms of Mahomet II. (1453), the
West, — ^and Italy above all, — ^was covered with the
fugitives from the mighty ruin.

Some of these, escaping it might have appeared
with no more than their lives, yet indeed brought with
them treasures of price, and such as made their wel-
come secure. Besides a living familiarity with the
Greek tongue they brought with them manuscripts of
Greek authors hitherto unknown, or known only by
bald and incorrect translations, in the West Constan-
tinople, it is true, had created little in the way of a
literature of its own during the last eight hundred
years of its existence ; but, ever since the remarkable
quickening of interest in classical studies which sig-

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THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 385

nalized the close of the ninth century, Byzantine
scholars had been very careful guardians of such
treasures of Greek literature as had not already
perished, — had been diligent in the preserving and
multiplying of such knowledge as was needful for the
right understanding of these. The day had now ar-
rived which should show that this watchful care had
not been exercised in vain.

The more distinguished among these refugees from
the East were received with open arms, oftentimes
with extravagant honours, by the princes of Italy: — ^as
notably by Alfonso V., King of Naples (i 442-1 448) ;
by Lorenzo the Magnificent (d, 1478) and other of the
Medici at Florence ; and at Rome by Popes such as
Nicolas V. (1447-1455), Pius II. (1458-1464), and,
somewhat later, Leo X. These last, as they played the
gracious host, little dreamt that they were entertaining
such as, without meaning any treacherous return for
this kindness, should yet work to the authors of it no
little harm. Professorships, canonries, and not seldom
posts higher still of academical honour or ecclesiastical
dignity, were found for them. Not the famous cities
of Italy alone, but almost every little town had its
Academia, the centre of classical studies and of a stir-
ring intellectual life. Petty tyrants of the Romagna,
retired condottieri like Malatesta, counted their litde
Court incomplete if it did not include one Humanist at
the least. I lighted lately on a passage in the Essays
of Montaigne, which describes in a very instructive
manner what at this time was going forward not in
Italy alone, but over all Europe. "My father," he
writes, " set on fire by that new kind of earnestness,
wherewith King Francis L embraced letters and raised

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386 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

them into credit, did with great diligence and much
cost endeavour to purchase the acquaintance of
learned men ; receiving and entertaining them as holy
persons, and who had some particular inspiration of
divine wisdom; collecting their sentences and dis-
courses, as if they had been oracles; and with so
much more reverence and religious regard, by how
much less authority he had to judge of them : for he
had no knowledge of letters, no more than his pre-
decessors before him."

A passage like this attests that it is not in Italy
alone that this admiration for the New Learning and
for the bearers of it was working. Still, as Italy was
the cradle, so for a long time was it the principal seat
of this newly awakened passion for the lore of the an-
cient world. It was no affected enthusiasm there.
Affectations, insincerities enough may have clung to
its skirts, as these ever cling to the skirts of a grand
movement ; but the enthusiasm itself was genuine ;
and Heeran has perfect right when he says, " Men
would have brought the Greek Muses to Italy, if they
had not themselves sought refuge there." Thus, when
Ficinus burned a lamp continually before the bust of
Plato, as others might have burnt one before the
shrine of some saint, it was a fact, and a very signifi-
cant one, which he expressed thereby. But the move-
ment did not remain an Italian one merely. It was not
long before the more promising of the youth of every
part of Europe, — Colet and Linacre, for example,
from England, — streaming over the Alps, sought to
share such advantages as only the schools of Italy in
fullest measure could offer. It is impossible without
liveliest interest to plant oneself in tliose times, when

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^ THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 387

almost every day had its own discovery, and this of
something more precious than the gold-mine and the
diamond-field which constitute our chief surprises now
— some precious manuscript brought to light and
shaking off the dust of centuries, some new region of
knowledge unfolding itself before the eyes of men.

When indeed one marks the immense influence
which the old Greek and Roman world, so soon as it
began to be intimately known, and its literature above
all, exercised on the thought and imagination of Eu-
rope, the intense homage which at once this com-
manded, one is compelled to own that it was well
familiarity with it did not earlier begin. Such a famil-
ilarity would inevitably have killed the original thought
and productive energy of the Middle Ages, which the
modern world could have done very ill without Awe-
struck by the perfection of form to which the master-
pieces of the ancient world had attained, failing to
realize of how much grander truths they were them-
selves the guardians, the men of later times would
have shrunk from entering into competition with that
which showed so immeasurably above and beyond
them ; and in form did, no doubt, immeasurably tran-
scend anything, to which, except after long efforts and
many failures, they were likely to attain. It was per-
mitted therefore to the Middle Ages to have their say,
to utter all which was in their heart, before the veil
was more than very partially withdrawn which hid
from men's eyes the treasures of the old classical
world.

** Humanists," as we have seen, was the title they
bore who threw themselves without reserve into the
study, — ^worship shall we call it? — of classical antiquity,

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388 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. ^

The name is a very instructive one. They claimed
by it, for the studies which they pursued, that these
contained the truest and highest culture of humanity,
that through these what was most truly human in man
would receive its highest development. It is worth
while to ponder this name, for it at once reveals them
to us in their strength and in their weakness ; what in
them was worthy of praise, and also where they went
wrong, and where indeed they were sure to go wrong ;
what the perils were which beset these new studies ;
what the gains great and manifold which true religion
might derive from them.

The mischiefs which might attend them did not fail
soon to appear. A passionate and exclusive admira-
tion for what was ancient, in other words for what was
heathen, soon displayed itself in a visible estrangement
on the part of most among the Italian Humanists, not
so much from the Church as from Christianity, from
the living Gospel of Christ. With the Church they
were willing enough to keep terms. Many of them
occupied its high places, enjoyed its emoluments;
indeed it is not too much to affirm that in- Leo X. a
Humanist filled the Papal Chair. There were no deep
moral convictions which drove them into opposition to
the Church, no fire in their bones so that they could
not keep silence. Only let them be free to employ
the shafts of their wit on the barbarous Latin of the
Schoolmen, to hold up to ridicule the ignoble squabbles
of the Friars, and they left unassailed the capital abuses
of the time, and were themselves in turn unassailed.
Frivolous, profane, freethinking, having assimilated
themselves only too faithfully to that heathen world
which they admired, we never read that the Inquisition

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THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 389

with all its activity troubled itself about them. For
indeed the Church of Rome seldom persecuted mere
laughers and mockers. She knew too well that she
had nothing to fear from these ; they were rather wel-
come to her than otherwise, as safety-valves for the
escape of the indignation and scorn which, violently
compressed, might have proved dangerous indeed. It
was those who were in deep religious earnest whom
she feared, and in whom, with a true instinct, she
recognized her foes.

The Humanists of Italy before very long showed
unmistakably of what spirit they were, out of what
root they grew. Their insatiable vanity, their bitter
envyings one of another, their shameless adulation of
the great of the earth, — adulation which, if it failed to
bring its due return, they could exchange in a moment
for the foulest abuse,-^their writings so often steeped
in the worst heathen impurities, and their lives to
matcTi, their denial of the primary truths not of Chris-
tianity alone, but of all religion, — as the freedom of the
will, the immortality of the soul, the judgment after
death, — told only too plainly of this.

The rise of a new heathenism within the bosom of
the Church — for it was often nothing less than this, —
belonged almost exclusively to Italy, the corruptest
portion of Christendom, as nearest to the centre of
corruption. Savonarola saw the* danger, and earnesdy
witnessed against it ; but among the famous names of
Italy he stands almost alone. In other lands, in Ger-
many and England, the study of classical antiquity
assumed a much healthier direction. To more than
one it was given to consecrate the gold and silver
which he had brought out of Egypt to the service of

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390 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

the tabernacle. Our own most prominent Humanists
are Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, and John
Colet, Dean of St Paul's. Melanchthon stands out as
the German representative; Erasmus as the Dutch.
For these, and for others like-minded, this study took
its true place ; not as the final goal of all studies, but
as a help and handmaid to that which is the queen of
all, namely to Theology, or the knowledge of the true
God. Here these better Humanists did excellent ser-
vice. It, indeed, is hard to see how the Reformation
could have done without them. Its strength lay in its
appeal to the Word of God as above every doctrine
and tradition of men : but, to make this appeal of any
worth, the interpretation of Scripture must be estab-
lished on sure foundations of grammar, so that no
doubt may remain that its sense has been truly appre-
hended.

The Humanists were thus most useful in hastening
on the Reformation. They did some excellent service
in the skirmishes which went before the battle ; and
even in the battle itself, at the first clashing of the op-
posing hosts. And yet from them as such, even where
they had not degenerated into worshippers of the old
mythologies; — and as such utterly heartless and insin-
cere for the work of the true God, — a Reformation
could never have proceeded. There were some abuses
which they could clearly see and indignantly denounce
and in so doing they may have often found themselves
in the same ranks with the true Reformers. But for
the waging a successful conflict with a system so
mighty still as that of the Church of Rome, or indeed
for the challenging of it to a conflict at all, there
needed much more than an insight ihto the corruption

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THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

391

of that system. There needed the faith which over-
comes the world; which counts God's truth dearer
than the life itself; there needed an inward bleeding
compassion for 'souls flattered and fed with deceitful
hopes ; and the study of the illustrious writers of
Greece and Rome gave none of these things ; nay,
when pursued to the exclusion of other studies, in-
stead of kindling men's affections for the truth, cooled
them rather. A Reformation carried out in their spirit,
supposing that the motive power for effecting this
could have been found, would have proved not a Re-
formation, but a Revolution ; could have ended in
nothing but in sheer unbelief.

Very instructive to us here, as showing that not from
a Revival of Learning, — not from this alone, nor from
this chiefly, — there should come effectual help for a
suffering Church, is the history of Erasmus (b. 1467,
d. 1536), himself the chief of the Humanists, a king in
the world of letters, and quite the most remarkable
figure in the age which immediately preceded the Re-
formation. And the story of his life is the more full
of teaching, seeing that he was by no means one of
those semi-pagan scholars, of whom I spoke just now.
On the contrary, while he displayed a ceaseless activity
in die editing and elucidating of classical authors, this
heathen learning had not all, nor the best of his affec-
tions. The truth in Christ, so far as he had appre-
hended it, was dear to him. He did much with his pen
for preparing the way of the Reformation ; and this
not negatively only, — assailing some of the worst
abuses of the Church, and the favourers of these, with
the shafts of his pitiless wit ; but in ways more posi-
tive, — producing various works invaluable in their time,

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392 THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

manuals of Christian faith and practice ; and, above
all, publishing the first edition of the New Testament
in the original language which had ever appeared. Its
appearance indeed one cannot regard otherwise than as
providentially timed, falling in as it exactiy did with the
year which immediately preceded the Reformation
(1516.)

So far most are agreed about him ; but his after at-
titude, when ^ he stood face to face with the Reforma-
tion, has been very variously judged. Those who
judge him the most hardly state the grounds of their
judgment and of their griefs against him very much
in language such as follows : — ^The foremost man of
his time so long as the movement was mainly a
literary one, — so soon as ever it assumed a more earn-
est shape, he declined to take any active share in it
He gave, indeed, to Luther a few words of encourage-
ment at the outset, but when he saw that the struggle
would be for life and death, he disengaged himself
from it, saying with ignoble self-scorn that others
might affect a martyrdom, he did not feel himself
called to this honour. He would very gladly have
persuaded the heads of the Church to abate some of
its most crying and flagrant abuses ; but, finding them
resolute to abide by these, he was not prepared to
break with them altogether. And thus he lived far on
into the Reformation period in an ambiguous position,
like the bat in the fable, which was owned neither by
the birds nor by the beasts. He had spoken too much
about the corruptions of the Church not to be re-
garded with dislike and suspicion by all who clung to
these, — for it was he, they said, who laid the egg which
Luther hatched ; but he was perhaps regarded with a

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THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 393

stronger dislike, one largely dashed with contempt, by
as many as beheld in him one who, for the retaining
of his worldly advantages, his favour with the great, his
literary ease, had been untrue, as they counted it, to
his deepest convictions ; and who, after sounding a
trumpet which summoned others to the batde, was
not, when the battle joined, hiniself found in the ranks
of the combatants.

Such was very much the indictment drawn up
against Erasmus in his own time; and in language
not very different from this many speak about him in
ours. It is not without its truth ; while yet consid-
erations are here left out, whose omission is not
altogether just. Erasmus, let it be remembered, did
not begin his career as a Reformer, — and it was
only by the way and by accident that he was such, —
but as a Humanist ; and in the main he was faithful
throughout to the duties which this name imposed.
One may wish that he had looked higher and seen
deeper. Yet when he refused to advance any farther,
and separated himself and his fortunes from those of
the more ardent Reformers, this was not a stopping
short upon his part at the prospect of danger on a
line whereupon he had hitherto been travelling, but a
refusal to allow himself to be violently transported
from his own line to quite another, to one upon which
he had never professed to travel ; for he had always
declared that a Reformation in Luther's sense and
carried out in his spirit involved so much of danger,
might be attended with such frightful calamities, as
would far outweigh any problematical good which
was to be gotten from it. There may have been,
I am sure diere was, a more excellent way than that

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394

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

which he chose ; but I am sure also' that it is easy
to say things about Erasmus, which shall be bit-
terer and more full of reproach than the actual facts
of the case, if duly weighed in the balance, would
warrant

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LECTURE XXVII.

CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

I HAVE written elsewhere as follows, and will venture
to repeat myself here, the book from which I quote
having been long out of print: — "How little could
friend or foe of the new-born faith have foreseen, that
out of it there should unfold itself a poetry infinitely
greater, an art infinitely higher, than the old world
had ever seen ; that this Faith which looked so rigid,
so austere, even so forbidding, should clothe itself in
forms of grace and loveliness such as the world had
never dreamt of before ; that poetry should not be
henceforward the play of the spirit, but its holiest
earnest ; that those artless paintings of the catacombs
had the prophecy in them of more wondrous compo-
sitions than man's eyes had ever seen ; or that a day
should arrive when above many a dark vault and
narrow crypt, where now the Christian worshippers
gathered in secret, should arise domes and cathedrals
embodying loftier ideas, because ideas relating to the
Eternal and the Infinite, than all those Grecian tem-
ples which now stood so fair and so strong ; but which
aimed not to lift men's hearts and minds from the
earth which they adorned."

Time, however, was needed for the bringing about
of this. During the first three centuries the mere
question of existence had taxed all the energies of the

395

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396 CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Church, which had thus little thought or care to be-
stow on aught which was not vital to her. When a
distinguished French statesman was asked what he
did during the Reign of Terror, his reply was, "I
lived; " — that was exploit enough in such an evil time.
The Church in like manner, "lived" during those
days of trial ; and so far as art was concerned, more
could not be demanded of her. With Constantine the
condition of things was altogether changed. Emerg-
ing from the catecombs she sought to clothe herself in
some outward beauty that should bear a faint corres-
pondence to that spiritual beauty of which she was
conscious within. As was natural, her earliest efforts
were to appropriate and adopt forms which she found
ready-made to her hands; to try whether she could not
subdue these to her own uses, fill them with her own
spirit. That she should make this attempt was inev-
itable, but inevitable too that a very partial success at
the best should attend it. The outer form and the
inner spirit of any true work of art are so closely
bound up together, the one being not so much the
vesture as the incarnation of the other, that the con-
tradiction which here made itself felt between the
heathen form and the Christian spirit effectually
wrought for the injury, often for the marring, of both.
Thus nothing can be poorer than the Christian
poetry written during the fourth and fifth centuries in
the old classical metres. As we read the hexameters
of Juvencus or Sedulius, there is a constant sense of
unfitness, of incongruity between the form and the
spirit, as of new wine poured into bottles stiff and old,
to the spoiling of both ; while with Christian alcaics
and sapphics it fares, if possible, worse. Even Pruden-

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CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 397

tius, who was a poet of true genius, and who Was
nearer success than any other, cannot be said to have
more than very partially succeeded It was not till
the classical framework of Latin verse was wholly
shattered, quantity absolutely ignored and accent sub-
stituted in its stead, the latent powers of rhyme being
at the same time evoked, that Christian Latin poetry
attained the perfection which fills with astonishment
all who are capable of judging, as they contemplate
this second birth of Latin song ; this rejuvenescence
of a language and a literature which had seemed to
have run their course, and to have uttered all which
was in their heart to utter.

The complete failure of all such attempts became
ever plainer as the Church grew more and more con-
scious of her ideal dignity, of her superiority to the
world around her and the world which she had left be-
hind her. With the hopes and aspirations which now
were hers she could less and less endure to be embar-
rassed by old traditions, to be shut in by laws and
limitations, the justice or necessity of which she did
not acknowledge. As time went on she more and
more transgressed, broke through and defied these,
even while as yet she had nothing better of her own
to substitute in their stead. Detaching hergelf from
the old Graeco-Roman world, and entering on untrod-
den ways of her own. she ventured on a grand but
hazardous experiment: — how far, that is, she could
array herself in garments of grace and beauty which
her own hands had wrought, for ever laying aside, how-
ever rich and gorgeous they might seem, such as had
not been made for her, at the best became her ill, and
often did not become her at all.

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398 CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

It was not till about the fifth century that the Church
gave any clear intimations that she would thus de-
velop an independent art of her own. The tokens of
any such intention on her part displayed themselves
first, as was inevitable, in the matter which was most
immediately urgent, in the houses, that is, which she
was now free to rear to Almighty God, and which she
could not therefore leave any longer unbuilt. There
were many reasons why the heathen temples should
not be the models which she chose for imitation.
That they were quite too small, being often litde more
than the shrine of the God or goddess to whom they
were dedicated, would have been reason enough; but
there was a deeper moral objection behind. The
heathen temples were too closely linked with the
service of false gods, in other words of devils, were
haunted with too many impure associations and pro-
fane memories, to be tolerable to the earnest Chris-
tians of those days.

There was less in the basilicas to offend and to
repel. These were courts or halls of justice, serving
also in their ample room as places of general resort,
where, as in a mart or exchange, the business of this
world was transacted. We hear it often repeated
that the early Christians obtained from the grace of
favouring Emperors some of the existing basilicas,
which by them were turned to uses higher than any
which they hitherto had known. This, however, has
never been proved. What is certain is that the
churches which the faithful now proceeded to build
were fashioned upon the pattern of the basilica, with
such modifications as enabled them to satisfy the higher
demands of that new service to which they were put,

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399

and to be indeed, according to the prophecy wrapt up
in their name, houses of the Great King. A serious
and stately edifice the basilica at the outset was, — as
indeed, whatever changes it might undergo, it never
ceased to be ; truly Roman in its character ; primarily
designed for use, yet not rejecting beauty, so far as
beauty was content to wait upon utility. I should be
passing out of the region of history into that of archae-
ology were I to attempt to trace the steps by which a
building, originally serving mundane purposes, was
transformed into one serving heavenly ; the roof litde
by little reared to loftier heights ; arms thrown out to
the right hand and the left, so to make space for the
crowds of worshippers who thronged its courts ; these
arms, or transepts as they came to be called, impress-
ing," without intending anything of the kind, a cruci-
form shape upon the building, which was not the less
welcome because it came thus unsought; while what
had been the Praetor's seat in the couch or recess at
the eastern end suggested the spot where now should
be the Bishop's throne, with the presbyters, his as-
sessors, ranged in semicircle round him. Much more
there is well worthy to be noted in the readiness with
which the basilica lent itself to all the needs of Chris-
tian discipline and worship ; so that even after houses
of God, grander and more original in conception, had
risen up at the bidding of mightier artists than the
builders of these, it still kept and keeps its place as an
abiding form of Christian architecture.

The basilica in its severe simplicity belonged, as we
have seen, to the West The style which we call
Byzantine was born, as its name imports, in the East ;
or, at any rate, was an Eastern modification of a

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CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Western building. Everything leads us to the con-
clusion that, up to the time of Justinian, the ecclesias-
tical architecture of New Rome differed little, if at all,
from that of the Old. Justinian himself reared many
basilicas. But the edifice by which he gained a name
for himself as one of the foremost church-builders of
the world, excelling, as was' his own boast, even Solo-
mon himself, — is St Sophia's at Constantinople (537).
It would be too much to say that this is the actual mo-
del upon which the whole church-building of the East
has since been modelled ; but it has certainly made its
influence felt throughout all, has moulded and modified
all. At Ravenna, the Byzantium of the West, the glo-
rious church of St. Vitalis (547) will give no unworthy
notion to as many of us as have never travelled farther
eastward, of what this style at its highest can effect

With whom the idea originated of grafting an en-
tirely novel feature on the basilica, and one which
should dominate every other, which indeed sometimes
should be the sole feature, that namely of a central
dome, — "the spreading cupola, the liveliest copy
which men's skill could frame of the vault of heaven"
(Freeman), — ^with whom, I say, the honour of this in-
vention lay, it may be impossible to affirm ; but New-
Roman or Byzantine, and not Old-Rome, it certainly
was. In Agrippa's Pantheon one element of the
grandeur of the dome had been anticipated, namely
its vastness, — ^but not its elevation ; for the dome of
the Pantheon, springing from low walls, makes no
effort to lift itself from earth to heaven. The rearing
of the dome to those astonishing heights, till it stood
as a heaven within the heaven, — this was the novelty.
In this, and in the successful mastering of all the

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401

structural difficulties which this presented, its main
glory consisted.

At the same time, sublime as the church of Justin-
ian is, this, and the other churches innumerable which
are formed on its pattern, have weaknesses and draw-
backs of their own. Thus, not to dwell on mere
technical embarrassments, — on the enormous weight
of the dome thus suspended high in air, needing as
this did piers the most massive to sustain it, — ^there
were other faults, and these more fundamental, which
clung to it. As in the Byzantine *State, so in the
church of the true Byzantine type, everything is cen-
tralized. The dome, and the space immediately be-
neath the dome, is all ; or, at best, everything else is
secondary and subordinated to this. There is no
leading up of the heart and eye to the Eastern end,
and to the chiefest mysteries which are celebrated
there, to the Sun of Righteousness which might be
looked for as rising there with healing on his wings :
while all those arrangements for divine worship and
for the distribution of the worshippers which grew so
naturally out of the basilica, have been disturbed;
others, which only imperfectly fulfil their object, need-
ing to be substituted in their room. The Byzantine
church is but the basilica with one magnificent Orien-
tal feature added to it, and that feature only imper-
fectly adapting itself to the purposes for which the
building was designed. The Orient, for Ravenna
must be regarded as an Oriental city, was the region
in which it moved and reigned, — a much narrower re-
gion than that which the basilica claimed as its own.

With the eleventh cientury a new era of church-
building begins. The apathy which possessed the

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402 CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

minds of multitudes as they drew near to the conclu-
sion of a Millennium, persuaded as they were that
with the year looo the world would come to an end,
and that therefore any labour, except for the supply
of immediate necessities, would be labour in vain, —
this apathy passed away, when it was perceived that
the end was not yet. It was succeeded, so soon as
tlje fatal term was left behind, by a ponderous burst
of activity, displaying itself in a thousand ways. In no
domain did it this more signally than in that of Chris-
tian architecture. " Arise, let us build," is every-
where the word. But what men built was not the old
Roman basilica, and as little the domical structure of
Byzantium ; while yet in the new style — Romanesque
it is .called — borrowing, as it does, features from both,
these styles were brought into fruitful association.

The life of Romanesque architecture, as compared
to the life of other styles, was comparatively brief. It
did not hold the foremost place for quite two centu-
ries, from the eleventh to tfie end of the twelfth.
During this time it has diverged into two branches,
with sufficient features in common to justify our in-
cluding of them under a common name, but at the
same time of a marvellous diversity. There is a
Northern Romanesque, of a grand and austere sim-
plicity, well fitted to that rugged North which it
adorns. Durham and Caen may be accepted as the
crowning glories of this, as is the cathedral of Pisa of
ornate Southern Romanesque. If we regard the Basil-
ican as the first, and the Byzantine as in chronological
succession the second order of Church architecture,
the Romanesque will constitute the third. Lombard
it is sometimes called, but by a misnomer; neither is

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CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 403

Secondary Roman, which some have styled it, to be
praised. " I claim," Mr. Freeman has said, " for Ro-
manesque to be looked.on neither as debased Roman
nor As imperfect Gothic ; but as a genuine indepen-
dent style, of which Italy and Norman England pro-
duced two varieties of coequal merit." Its chief char-
acteristic is delight in the multiplication of the arch,
not so much for the support as for the ornamentation
of the building. Within and without there is the
same prodigal employment of this form. But the
arch is round, and chiefly used for decoration. There
is no hint as yet of the immense structural effects, and
effects more marvellous still, which, by the employ-
ment of the pointed arch might be secured.

Christian architecture had done many wonderful
things ; but it had not spoken its last word, nor shown
all which it could accomplish, until the unfolding to-
ward the close of the twelfth century of that which is
as " the bright consummate flower," the crown and
completion of all which had gone before, — the style
which, satisfying at once the aspirations of the Christ-
ian spirit and the exigences of art, has adorned all
middle Europe, and as far north as Drontheim, with
those cathedrals which are at once the admiration and
despair of the after world. The name of Gothic, by
which we now call this style, is, as learners are often
reminded, an absurd misnomer ; having been origin-
ally a random term of contempt equivalent to barba-
rous, given to this birth of the genius of the North by
the Italians of the Renaissance, who had no eye for
the glory of it, and no faith in any styles but those
which had been handed down from the ancient world.
Vasari (d. 1 564) is reported, I know not how truly, to

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404 CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

have been the first to make this application of the
word. It is not a misnomer only^ but a misleader as
well,— saying at once too much and too little. It says
too much, for Goths had nothing to do with its inven-
tion ; any people called by this name having disap-
peared centuries before from the earth. It says too
litde, seeing that it makes no attempt to seize and to
express the chief characteristics of this style. It is
not the less true that to find the appropriate name is
not so easy. Ogival, borrowed from the French use,
is quite too hard a word ; and, though it does not sug-
gest error, has the disadvantage of suggesting, to us
at least, nothing. Romantic, which has been some-
times proposed, may be dismissed at once ; defects
quite as serious cleave to it as to Gothic. Then too,
being as this style of architecture is, an explosion of
genius nearly simultaneous in Germany and in North-
ern France, to call it German would be unjust to
France, which, pointing to Chartres, to Rheims, to
Amiens, — that triology unique in grandeur of concep-
tion and perfection of detail, — to Notre Dame of
Paris, and to many more, might justly complain that
the whole question of the priority of invention was
thus, without so much of a hearing granted, given
against her. At the same time, calling it French, we
might be doing an equal wrong to Spires, to Cologne,
to Strasburg, and to other cathedrals not unworthy to
be named in the same breath with these.

I know not what better can be done than to give
this style its name from the pointed arch which is its
distinguishing feature and the key to its marvels ; for
though this arch was not now employed for the first
time, it never played a foremost part till now. Like

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CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

405

almost everything which is destined to exercise a
mighty and permanent influence, it entered unnoticed
and at unawares into the world. Brought in all likeli-
hood from the East, and domiciled first in Sicily, it
was only after a while that the capabilities of decora-
tive beauty and constructive power latent in it were
revealed. Neither is there any exact moment or
place to which pointing we can say that then and there
the pointed arch was first employed. Existing side by
side with the round arch, and suggested, as some have
thought, by the intersection of two such arches, it was
only by steps which cannot always be accurately
traced, that, wrestling in conflict with this, it won the
day, and was bold to claim a future of unparalleled
magnificence for its ov/n.

It had a right to claim it, for what difficulties now
were solved, what possibilities of grandeur and .beauty
were now brought within reach ! All fear of laying
too heavy a weight on the arches might now be dis-
missed. The pressure, not so much lateral as perpen-
dicular, was comparatively easy to deal with. Higher
and ever higher rose the principal lines of the Gothic
cathedral, — ^lines no longer horizontal, level that is with
the earth, and never losing their nearness to it ; but
vertical, climbing up into and piercing the heaven,
themselves a Sursum corda uttering itself in stone.
Words are weak to express the marvel and the glory
of the buildings which in emulous rivalry covered in a
little while the face of Germany, of Northern France,
of England. For the building which now, obedient to
the architect's wand, sprang up, was riot merely a stu-
pendous fabric of richest elaboration, of rarest audacity
of conception. It was in all its parts, in great and in

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4o6 CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

small, a symbolism, — the embodiment in material forms
of an idea, and that idea the grandest which the world
has known ; a spiritual poem taking visible shape and
fashion before the eyes of men ; admitting the amplest
variety in detail, but not the less under law ; as much
under a law ever present and ever active as the Divine
Comedy of Dante,, and like it a poetry and a theology
in one.

But while it fared thus upon our side of the Alps,
the Renaissance was more and more making itself felt
in Italy, and not least in modifying the character of
Italian Church architecture. There was a return to
the old classical forms ; not indeed to these pure and
simple, for it was impossible to ignore altogether all
that had been accomplished during the last thousand
years, but to these forms in the main. Whatever the
genius of a Bramante, a Brunelleschi, a Michael An-
gelo could bring about, — whatever the most lavish en-
joyment of the cosdiest materials, of the richest
marbles, of the most elaborate mosaics, of gold and of
silver, — ^whatever the most amazing dimensions could
effect, nothing of this was wanting. But the essential
character of the Renaissance, that which was at once
its strength and its weakness, namely that it owned
this world as the sphere in which it was well satisfied to
move and did not reach out after a higher, made itself
felt here, as it did in every other province and domain
of art. St. Peter's at Rome astonishes and imposes,
but fails altogether to strike with religious awe. The
same may be said, though not quite so strongly, of the
cathedral of Milan, which may be regarded as the
point where Northern or Gothic and Southern or Ital-
ian art meet and mingle.

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CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

407

I have dwelt so long on the Christian architecture
of the Middle Ages, that litde time is left me to speak
of their other arts. And yet I have only assigned to
it, that larger portion of our time which it might fairly
challenge ; for indeed Architecture is the fine art of
the Middle Ages ; the queen to whom all other arts
are but as handmaids. It was not, in fact, till the
twelfth century that churches began to be decked with
sculpture at all ; which for a long time after remained
merely a subsidiary ornament. Statues may fill every
niche within and without of a cathedral, — there are
said to be four thousand in that of Bourgeg, — ^and cer-
tainly none can deny the magnificent decorative effects,
and often the profound symbolism of the splendid
series of sculptures which adorn the west fronts of so
many of the French cathedrals ; but for all this, Sculp-
ture is there in the service of a greater than itself ;
and it is not till the Middle Ages are nearly spent
that it claims (first I should say in Donatello, b. 1383,
d. 1466) an independent existence of its own.

Painting too remains for a long while in the back-
ground, though not so completely as does Sculpture.
Compared with this it shows itself capable of render-
ing service which, for reasons that lie very deep,
Sculpture is incapable of yielding. This in all ages
has been strongly felt The Greek Church, indeed,
for which pictures are favourite assistances to devo-
tion, and which has passed through such terrible trials
rather than suffer these to be wrested from her, abso-
lutely disallows raised sculptural representations of
things sacred either in the church or in the house.
This superiority of Painting over Sculpture in the
sphere of religious art is sufficiently intelligible. Of

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4o8 CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

these sisters Sculpture is the more sensuous, Painting
the more spiritual. Sculpture too is subject to various
limitations from which Painting is free ; colour is want-
ing to it, and atmosphere, the oppositions of darkness
and light, the suggestion of vast distances, the gran-
deur of immense multitudes gathered to a single spot
and under the influence of the same emotion. And
then, if the beauty of the human form is that which
more than all else Sculpture aims at reproducing, it
can never in the Church be forgotten that there is a
worm at the root of this beauty ; that in all save One
it is from the first bound over to decay and death and
to all the dishonour of the grave. The heathen world
did not feel this ; or in its passionate worship of mere
physical beauty contrived to forget it Admiring too,
but not reverencing, the body, it had no scruple about
setting forth the beauty of the human form without
covering or concealment; or, what scruple it had for a
while, this before long had been dismissed : while in
Christian art, — in art, that is, which stood under the
immediate influence of religion, — such an absence of
honourable shame was inconceivable. All this ex-
plains how it came to pass that Sculpture exercised a
far more potent spell on the heathen world than it
exercises upon us ; while the modern or Christian
world, yielding the palm of excellence in this domain
of art, claims in Painting to have evoked forms of
grace and beauty whereof the antique heathen times
did not so much as dream.

Certainly it is a very narrow temper which finds
fault with the employment by the Church of those
ancillary helps, adorning and beautifying, which Art

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CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 409

supplies. We may heartily welcome them; but, as a
general rule, only upon one condition — namely, that no
more is used of them than it may be fairly expected
that the worshippers will be able to absorb and take
up in such a reasonable service as He who is Spirit
demands on the part of his worshippers. Some words
of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, seem to me
to express excellently well what are the due limits
which the artistic element in worship should not over-
pass : — " Such," he says, " is the truth and simplicity of
the Christian ireligion, that if the authority of the
Church think good to recommend any additional cir-
cumstances of divine worship, they must not be for in-
effectual pomp and show, but for real use and edifica-
tion, affecting such a beauty and comeliness as Nature
does in living creatures, whose pulchritude is the result
of such a symmetry of parts and tenour of spirits as
implies vigour and ability to all the functions of life.
And truly there should be no more ceremony in the
Church than the use thereof maybe obvious to under-
stand, and the life and power of holiness may throughly
actuate ; that our minds may not be amused, lost, sunk
in, or fixed* upon, any outward things here, but be car-
ried from all visible pomps to the love and admiration
of our Blessed Saviour in Heaven, and of that heavenly
and divine life that He came into the world to beget
in the hearts of all true believers." It would be un-
true, in my judgment, to aver that the limits here laid
down were not often overpassed. The Church's ritual,
with all its glorious surroundings, was often, so to
speak, as some glass, opaque where it should have
been translucent, and stopping for itself the light
which it should have transmitted to others. The Puri-

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4IO

CHRISTIAN ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

tan excess was a not unnatural reaction against the
aestlietic in worship, developed as this last was to an
extent that would have been only justifiable if the
higher spiritual worship had advanced hand in hand
with it, which assuredly was not always or nearly
always the case.

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LECTURE XXVIIL

ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK IN THE
MIDDLE AQES.

When we attempt to compare the Middle Ages in
their religious aspect with the ages which have suc-
ceeded them, there is error and exaggeration on
either side into which it is abundanriy easy to fall.
There is the error and exaggeration on one side of
unduly depreciating those ages, — to which Protestants
are most addicted ; as on the other side there is that
of magnifying them over much, extolling them as
"ages of faith," with a tacit subaudition that all
which came after have been ages of unbelief, — into
which Roman Catholics more often run. There is
much to explain and account for both excesses. Thus
if some set these ages too high, this is not seldom the
reaction of generous spirits, who feel that injustice
has been done them, and who, instead of redressing
the scales, disturb them in the opposite direction.
Nor is this the only explanation. Doubdess in those
ages religion claimed to mingle as a present influence,
penetrating and pervading the every day life of men,
far more than now it does. Reminders in one shape
or another of a higher world-order, behind that world
of shows and phantoms in the midst of which we
move, were far more numerous then ; nor can it be
denied that the world is now left in the exclusive pos-

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41 2 ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK

session of domains of human existence which Faith
once claimed, in part or wholly, as her own.

Yet in measuring age against age it is often for-
gotten, and nowhere so often as here, that the out-
ward manifestations of religion may be, and have been
before now, not the effluence and utterance of its
inner spirit, but a substitute for it. Thus in lands
where the medieval tradition is the strongest we see
not seldom an entire divorce between religion or out-
ward devoutness and morality, and this without any
conscious hypocrisy on their parts who are religious
without being moral. The Italian brigand wears little
leaden saints in his hat ; he has his favourite shrine at
which his devotions are duly paid : and all this with
no sense of the tragic contradictions between one
half of his life and the other. Gasperone, who closed
his career in a Roman prison, had committed murders
out of number ; but boasted, and no doubt counted
it a fair matter of boasting, that he had never com-
mitted one on a Friday. We may then freely accept
the fact that life was more thronged and crowded with
religious observances in the Middle Ages than it is
now, without accepting this as a convincing proof that
a larger proportion of those who professed the faith
of Christ owned the obligations of God's moral law,
and ordered their lives in conformity with it, then than
now.

But it is not the admirers of medieval Christianity
only who thus exceed. There is, as I have said, an-
other extreme ; that namely of so dwelling on what
was amiss and out of joint in those times, — the scan-
dals, the offences, the disorders, the superstitions, —
that we lose sight altogether of the work of grace and

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IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

413

power which the great Head of the Church was then,
as at all times, carrying forward in the hearts of his
people. Those tempted to lose sight of this would
do well to study a litde more closely some centuries
in which^ as men are wont to tell us, the light was the
least, and the love had grown the coldest Without
changing their mind about the presence of evil in
them, and this in amounts terrible lo think of, they
will perhaps change their mind about the absence of
good. The tenth century has a very bad name in
Church history, as among the Dark Ages the darkest,
— ^an age, as Baronius describes it, in which Christ
was indeed still in the Ship, and therefore it was not
submerged ; but in which He was sleeping there. I
have no desire to question this verdict; and yet, when*
we know that period a little more nearly, what noble
figures it reveals. What grander company of Chris-
tian men and women, and these occupying the thrones
of the earth, would any where greet us than greet
us here : — Otto the Great, and Brun, Archbishop of
Cologne, his brother, these two, the layman and the
priest, working so zealously together for the spread of
Christian missions among the wild heathen races that
raged and stormed around the fortress of German
Christianity ; while, completing this royal group, there
is Matilda, the mother of these ; and Otto's queen,
well worthy to share his toils and his throne, our
English Edith, grand-daughter and undegenerate scion
of Alfred the Great ?

Or take that cruel and wicked fifteenth century — an
unlovely time, if such there was ever. The interval
which parts two eras, it displays all the evils which
usually wait upon times of transition ; being as they

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414 ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK

are times when the old, although all or nearly all its
virtue has gone out of it, is not yet dead and buried,
but still haunts and cumbers the earth ; while the new
and the better is only uncertainly feeling its way, and
little by little learning to use the power and fulfil
the duties which have lapsed to it. Look at that
age, with all its cruelties and crimes ; and at the same
time remember that it was the century of Thomas a
Kempis, of Gerson, of Hus, of the author of the
German Theology, of Joan of Arc, of the Brethren of
the Common Life, of Savonarola. It was a century
in which one, seeking to estimate the state of religion
round him, could say, " It is a laudable custom with
many of both sexes, and these not of the humbler
classes only, but magnates and nobles, to set apart at
least one hour at some set time of every day for the
recalling and meditating on that highest benefit be-
stowed on the human race, the passion of Christ/' It
were to be desired that so laudable a custom of the
fifteenth century had not become nearly extinct in the
nineteenth. We do ourselves, we do the Church of
Christ much wrong when we fail to recognize and to
dwell with thankful praise on the grand and beautiful
souls which in every age have been trained by Him
for his heavenly kingdom. What mightier attestation
of the divine character ' of Christ's religion than the
fact that all which men have so perversely mingled of
superfluous or mischievous with it, has^not robbed it
of its power to heal and to bless, and to fashion elect
souls as polished comers for the temple!

The Church of the Middle Ages, as indeed has
been the case with the Church in other ages as well,
was on several occasions arrested in the downward

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IN THE MIDDLE AGES,

415

path of spiritual declension and decay, quickened to a
new life, by what we should now call'a Revival. The
Revivals of those times may not have been, and were
not, revivals exacdy after the pattern which we, with
our clearer lights, but perhaps not stronger affections,
mi^ht wish them to have been ; but seeing that un-
happily we cannot reform our ancestors, w^ must take
such times of refreshing as they were, giving credit to
them for all which they had of healthy and good ; and
heartily regretting that what cannot be qualified as
such had any part in them, leaving them, as no doubt
it did, less fruitful of abiding good than they otherwise
would have been.

Thus, to enumerate a few of the beneficent waves
of high spiritual emotion which in the ages wherewith
we have to do, swept over Western Christendom,
there was the revival of the better elements of monas-
tic life, the recovery of discipline, the rekindling of
zeal, whereof, the religious foundation of Clugny was
the centre and the hearth (910). There was again,
wh^n this revival had spent itself a little, the Cister-
cian reform, in which St. Bernard (b. 1091, d. 11 53)
led the way. Of both of these I have spoken already.
Again, there were the Crusades, which we as much
misconceive when we leave out of sight the nobler
and purer impulses which were at work in them, as
when we see in them nothing else but these. There
were the early days of the Mendicant Orders, with so
much of promise about them that men wise and good
hailed in them the dawn of a more glorious day than,
as it proved, they should ever usher in. There was
Scholastic Philosophy for those who sought to know
that they might love, and the Mystic Theology for

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41 6 ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK

those who sought to love that they might know ; — nor
do these at all exhaust the list

I alluded just now to blemishes v/hich cleaved to the
Medieval Revivals, and, without destroying, more or
less impaired their worth. Certainly the most serious
of these blemishes was the immense increase of the
worship of t^e Blessed Virgin which signalized so
many among them. The growth of this cult, the
causes which led to it, the shapes which it assumed, all
this I should find it impossible historically to 'treat of;
but it is a phenomenon of these ages altogether too
significant to allow me to pass it over with merely a
transient notice. It would be long to tell of the cycle
of greater feasts instituted in her honour, which was
not counted complete till it had reached the mystic
number seven ; it would be endless to recount the in-
numerable lesser feasts and local devotions. Tides of
honour were invented for her, as Queen of Heaven,
Star of the Sea, Mother of Pity, Refuge of Sinners,
which not merely had no sanction in Scripture, but had
no analogy in anything there ; ransacked though
Scripture was, that so it might yield prophetic or
mystic anticipations of the glories which should be hers.
What was not ascribed to her now? She was the
new and the better Eve ; and in the Ave of the An-
gelic Salutation there was traced a significant reading
backward of the name of another, from whom and
from whose disobedience all death had proceeded, in
favour of a better Eva, from whom and from whose
obedience all life had flowed. She was the Wisdom
which builded her house with the seven pillars (Prov.
ix. i) ; and the Bride of the Canticles, this Song of
songs being an Epithalamium of which she is the ob-

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IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

417

ject ; and the woman clothed with xhe sun and having
the moon beneath her feet (Rev. xii. i) ; and she, the
Ever Virgin, the East gate of Ezekiel's Temple, by
which the Prince of the people entered once, but
which henceforward was shut for evermore (Ezek.
xliv. 2). Jacob's ladder, linking earth to heaven (Gen.
xxviii. 12), was a mystic symbol of her; ^nd the Bush
that burned and was not consumed (Exod. iii. 2) ; and
Aaron's rod that budded (Num. xvii. 8) ; and Gideon's
fleece (Judg. vi. 37) ; with much more in like kind.

But Scripture was submitted to worse usage than
this. It was directly falsified so to do her the more
honour. A profane travestie of the Psalter, sometimes
ascribed to Bonaventura, but not the work of the
" Seraphic Doctor," was a favourite book of devotion
in these ages. In this, to take one sample, the open-
ing words of the iioth Psalm, "The Lord said unto
my Lord," reappear as "The Lord said unto my
Lady;" with the rest to match. After such handling
of the word of God, it will sound as a small matter
that the Church's grandest hymn should be dealt with
in the same fashion ; that side by side with a Te Deum
there should be a Te Virginem laudamus. She was
addressed as the Mother who could command her Son
— ^language which, as we learn from an interesting
communication of Dr. Newman's, has recendy been
authoritatively condemned and forbidden at Rome.
All power on earth and in heaven was declared to
have been committed to her; as without the Son
nothing was made, so without her, the Mother, nothing
was. remade. He was the Mediator, she was the
Mediatress. If a distinction was still maintained be-
tween the worship addressed to her and to the several

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41 8 ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORIC

Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, there was also a
distinction drawn in- the opposite direction between
the service addressed to her and that offered to any-
other of the Saints. Falling below the one and rising
above the other it occupied a middle place between
the two.

This cult of the Blessed Virgin, — in the pushing of
which to well-nigh insane excesses Peter Damiani ob-
tained a bad pre-eminence, — fell in with the spirit of
chivalry which was everywhere abroad, encouraged
this, and was itself encouraged by it. In such names
as Our Lady, Notre Dame, Madonna, we hear the
language of gallantry and devotion blended into one ;
and it is not easy to measure the extent to which these
fevoked and mutually sustained one another. The
fact that this cult inspired a poetry and a painting of
beauty the most transcendent,— creations of loveliness
that without these springs of inspiration would never
have come to the birtli, — all this may be freely ac-
cepted; but accepted without any acceptance of a
conclusion which is often deduced herefrom, namely
that what is so beautiful must also be true. This does
not by any means follow. Greek Art, in many ways
unsurpassed and unsurpassable, roots itself in the
Greek mythology. There were the gods of the Greek
Pantheon, a Zeus or a Pallas Athene, gods which were
no gods, that inspired a Phidias; but that Greek
mythology receives no seal or attestation of its truth
hereby. There is a world far higher than the world
of Art; and when our youthful poet, "the young
Marcellus of our tongue," exclaimed, " Beauty is truth,
truth beauty," he was transferring into the present im-
perfect condition of things that absolute identity of

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IN THE MIDDLE AQES. 419

truth and beauty which sh^ll only come to pass in that
glorious future which is still waiting to J>e revealed.

The immense development of the sensuous and the
symbofic, of which I have spoken elsewhere, — the mis-
taken confidence that men might be effectually taught
by means of these without the living and interpreting
voice, — did much to throw into the background that
divine ordinance, the preaching of the Word. Do not
suppose when I say this, that there were not illustrious
preachers in the Middle Ages. Of many such we
know, and these many are few; as compared to those
we do not know. Not a few famous in other lines
were also famous in this ; — ^as St. Bernard, as Thomas
Aquinas, as Innocent III., as Bonayentura. Others
there are whose reputation with the after world mainly
rests on their excellence as preachers. Liet me liame,
among the Dominicans John of Vicenza (cir. 1230),
author of a wonderful revival' in Italy, — ^a revival in-
deed marred, like that of Savonarola, by the mixing of
a political element with it ; and Vincent Ferrer of the
same Order (i 357-1 41 9), indefatigable in this work,
by one means or another making himself understood
in so many lands that men ascribed to him the gift of
tongues. More famous still is Bertholdt of Ratisbon
(d. 1272), popular as the best Franciscans knew how
to be ; and of whom we are better able to judge than
of many, a large number of his sermons having
reached us. It must be allowed that the new style of
popular preaching, mainly introduced by the Mendi-
cants, if it had its merits, had also its defects and dan-
gers. Bertholdt's own sermons, with much worthy of
admiration, sufficiendy attest this. These preachers
from the people, addressing themselves to the people,

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420 ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK

and more ad plebem than ad poptdum^ sought by meth-
ods sometimes questionable, — ^by legend, by jest, by
buffoonery, — to obtain a hearing for themselves and
for their message. In the Capuchin of the Prologue
to Schiller's Wcdlenstein we have a sketch of this pop-
ular preacher at a somewhat later date, yet no doubt
very much the same man as he was two centuries be-
fore, and seeking to make his effects by the same arts.
But the history of Medieval preaching still waits to be
written.

I have spoken to you already on the system of In-
dulgences, which assumed so fatal a prominence in the
later Middle Ages. When we have at all realized to
ourselves what a system like this in actual working
must have been, we are tempted to wonder how any
high Christian life could have maintained itself at all,
in the face of a machinery so disastrously adapted for
the lowering of the tone of that life, for robbing God's
judgments of their terrors, and man's repentance of
its earnestness. We can only account for the survival
of this life by the fact that there are very few who in
actual practice push the principles which they profess,
and the truths which they believe, to their" ultimate
consequences. The good which men embrace does
not make them so good as they might and would be if
they followed it to all its legitimate results ; nor yet
the bad so bad. " Pardons are from hell" — this might
be quite true, which *once a Franciscan friar in his
righteous indignation exclaimed ; but despite of these
" pardons," and of men's trust in them, and even then
when these were most in vogue, there were numbers
who strove to enter by the strait gate, and whom
God had taught in his own school that the means for

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421

making this entrance sure were not remissions of sin
bought with money, but faith and penitence and
prayer.

We have dwelt on some aspects of Church life in
those ages which are, or ought to be, a grief and sor-
row to us ; but that life had much fairer sides as well.
In all ages, wherever the Gospel comes with power to
the hearts of men, it shows itself full of mercy and
good fruits, It would be a serious injustice to the
Church of the Middle Ages to suppose it barren of
institutions for the relief of human wretchedness and
woe. So far from this, the multitude and almost end-
less variety of these are among the most attractive
features which those Ages present. -When we bear
in mind the imperfect social organization of those
times, how litde the State undertook to look after its
children — indeed, it can hardly be said to have under-
taken to look after them at all, — it is easy to imagine
to what frightful heights this misery might have risen
except for the alleviations of it which were thus af-
forded. If, after all was done, the open sores of society
were not healed then, we must in fairness to those
times remember that they are as litde healed at the
present The wretchedness that was in the world out-
stripped then, as it outstrips now, the most earnest ef-
forts to overtake it But the efforts were not want-
ing ; and they had their measure of success. Whether
in proportion to means and opportunities these efforts
were as great or greater in those ages than they are
now, He only can tell who notes in the book of his
remembrance all that is done, and all that is not done,
for the least of his brethren. Let me here speak a

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ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK

litde of the heavenly plants which then as now, spring-
ing up under the shadow of the Cross, and twining*
round its stem, were by it sustained, being watered
and kept green by the precious dews which evermore
drop and distil from that sacred Tree.

In ages when pilgrimages were so rife, and in these
I include that armed pilgrimage the Crusade, there
naturally did not lack houses of rest and refreshment
for the reception of those who were on their way to
Holy Land, or to some sacred shrine: — these houses
by the very necessities of the case being hospitals for
the sick and worn and way-weary as well. The Hos-
pitalers or Knights of St John were at the outset no
more than male hospital nurses, who waited, for the
love of God, upon the sick, first under the walls of'
Acre (i 191), and afterwards elsewhere in Palestine.
These, after they had added to the duties first under-
taken by them the warring against the infidel, did still,
by the aid of lay-brothers who were associated with
the Order, remain faithful in a measure to the objects
of their first institution.

The Monastery, whatever might be the disorders,
whatever the relaxation of discipline within its walls,
rarely forfeited its character for an hospitality extended
to rich and poor alike. Nor is it possible to read with-
out admiration the gracious courtesies which, accord-
ing to the Rule of St. Benedict, should evermore ac-
company the reception within cloister walls of the
wayfarer and the wanderer ; the whole purpose and
aim of these being to make all who shared this hospi-
tality to feel that they rather conferred a favour thaa
received one. When some made a charge against
these institutions, that, by an almost indiscriminate dis-

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IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

423

tribution of alms, they fed and fostered the poverty
which they professed and seemed to relieve, this no
doubt is true ; but what is it after all but saying that
they shared in the economical errors which were uni-
versal in their time ; while if herein they offended more
than the rest of the world, this was only because their
bounty was on a larger scale ?

I need hardly mention that the Penitentiary for the
rising to a new life of holiness women who had fallen
deeply into sin is no modem invention. The Order
of Fontevraud, founded by Robert of Arbrissil (1094),
made these unhappy ones its peculiar care. And as
little is the Foundling Hospital a modern experiment.
Whether this in actual working does not generate
more evil than it prevents may well be a question ;
but with the widespread prevalence of infanticide, not
in die heathen world only, but in the nominally Chris-
tian, it was inevitable that earnest men should make
proof whether some help was not here to be found.
Lay Guilds too there were — they still survive in
Florence and in other cities of Italy to the present
day — ^which occupied themselves with the decent and
reverent carrying of the Christian dead to their last
home. There was a Leper-house, Muratori tells us,
in almost every city of Italy — rendered necessary as
these were by the prevalence of leprosy, and its ma-
lignity as It then existed, a malignity which the disease
now retains only in the East, if, indeed, in the worst
forms it retains it even there. For the ministry of
these houses there were organized companies of men
and women, not seldom drawn from the noblest fami-
lies of the land, who did not shrink from the most re-
volting offices which this service entailed.

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ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK

It is very interesting to note the thoughtful care
which devised charities such as would have scarcely or
not at all suggested themselves, where there was not
a very lively sense and a tender consideration of the
wants of others. There were Bridge-builders, asso-
ciated for the building or keeping in repair of bridges
for the use of way-farers, — of pilgrims above all.
There were guilds for the waiting on and ministering
to criminals condemned to death, a far more numerous
class under the rough and ready administration of
justice which prevailed in those days than they are at
present. Then too there were associations, monastic
or semi-monastic, as that of the Trinitarians, which
took as their distinct mission the redemption from
slavery of such as by evil hap had fallen into the hands
of the infidel. There were found heroic souls among
these, who, when other ransom was not forthcoming,
and when for one reason or another the case would
admit of no delay, — as for instance, when there was
danger of a perversion to Islam, — bought the liberty
of a captive at the price of their own. Indeed, an en-
gagement not to shrink from this last act of self-sacri-
fice, if need so required, constituted a fourth vow
which was taken by those who entered these Orders
for the redemption of captives, in addition to the usual
three.

There were other benefits, and they were not small,
of which the Medieval Church was the source and
spring in times wherein men, owning, as it was, very
few and slight restraints on their passions and appe-
tites, would, except for those by the Church imposed,
have owned none at all. To the Church was due the

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425

attempt, not wholly unsuccessful, to set some sort of
limit to the prosecution of private feuds, by the institu-
tion, in the eleventh century, and first in Aquitaine, of
what was called " The Truce of God." By this it was
forbidden to wage these hateful private wars on cer-
tain days of the week ; — not on Thursday, being the
day of our Lord's Ascension ; nor on Friday, as that
of his Passion ; nor on Saturday, as that when He
rested in the grave ; nor on Sunday, as the day of his
Resurrection, — not, that is, from Wednesday night .
until Monday morning; the Truce was also to find
place during certain sacred seasons of the yean At
the same time the Church took under her protection
clerics, monks, lay brethren, pilgrims, labourers going
to or returning from their work, women and children,
— all of whom were to remain unmolested and free to
move backward or forward in the midst of the men at
arms engaged in these quarrels. It need hardly be
remarked that all these ordinances of mercy were very
imperfecdy observed, were continually violated ; but
they were very far from being wholly inoperative or
without their value, as some might suppose.

Then, too, it was from the Christian Church that any
effectual impulses proceeded for the amelioration of
the condition of the slave and serf, and for the final
extinction of slavery and serfdom. Travelling in the
lines marked out by the Aposdes themselves, and
chiefly by St Paul, the Medieval Church did not, any
more than the Apostolical, denounce slavery as a
wholly unlawful institution ; nor seek with revolution-
ary violence to overturn the whole existing frame-
work of society with its several orders and conditions
of men. But while she bore with this, she at the same

3i>

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426 ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK

time always taught that he did an act well pleasing to
God, who, either in his lifetime, or by testamentary
disposition and, as it was then called, " for the remedy
of his soul," gave freedom to the servile members of
his household.

Much too the Church effected for the bettering of
their condition for whom the hour of their emancipa-
tion had not as yet struck. It was impossible that the
equality of all men in the world to come, — and before
God already in this world, as in a present kingdom of
heaven, — could be proclaimed, as in every act of the
Church it was proclaimed, without seriously modifying
the relations between master and slave. There might
still be room only too large for the exercise of cruelty
and caprice ; but something, nay, much was in this
way accomplished. Nor did the Church in this matter
teach by precept only, but also by example ; pointing
as she was able to do to the hindis and labourers on
lands held directly by ecclesiastical bodies, and to the
comparatively thoughtful kindness and humanity with
which they were treated, as a pattern that secular pro-
prietors might do well to imitate. Some in late years
have sought to deprive the Medieval Church of the
honour which is her due, as the prime mover in the
emancipation of the serf and the slave ; or, where her
influence reached not so far, as rendering less intoler-
able the hard condition of these. In such attempts
there is manifest injustice. Many causes must have
wrought together for the gradual diminution, and in
the end the extinction, of slavery in Western Europe ;
but here was very far the most effectual cause of all.
It is no more than justice to acknowledge this.

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LECTURE XXIX.

THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

Let us plant ourselves, so far as this is possible, in the
times which immediately preceded the Reformation.
To one who took but a superficial view of things, at
no time would the Church have seemed to have a bet-
ter right to say, " I sit as a Queen, and shall see no
sorrow." She had come forth to all appearance not
seriously damaged from the profound humiliations of
the Avignonese Popedom, and the great Schism. The
decrees of the Three Councils, by which it had been
sought to place some limits on the absolutism of the
Popes, had been, some secretly evaded, others openly
set at naught or solemnly reversed. At the same
time the Councils had done for the Papacy what pro-
bably no other, friend or foe, could have done for it.
By their aid the enormous scandal of Pope and anti-
pope anathematizing one another had ceased, and has
never since revived.

In many other ways too the position seemed im-
proved. The sects which had been so threatening
once,-^which, in a mistaken confidence of their own
strength, had challenged the Roman Church to do bat-
de for her very existence, — ^which had honeycombed
the very ground on which she trod, — these, so far as
they still existed, were but the thin ghosts and sha-
dows of what once they had been. The conflagration

427

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428 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

kindled in Bohemia by a spark from Hus' funeral pyre,
had fairly burned itself out The sword of the crusa-
der and die scaffold of the inquisitor had proved more
than a match for the Manichaean sects, the whole elab-
orate network of whose organization had perished. A
like fate had befallen the Libertines, — Brethren of the
Free Spirit and others,— by whatever name they are
known. There were scattered Manichaeans and Liber-
tines still, but these only too glad to escape notice.
The Waldenses alone as a visible body survived, even
as they alone deserved to survive; but these also
thrust back into their Alpine retreats, and neither in
numbers, nor organization, nor aggressive energy cal-
culated to inspire any serious uneasiness.

More really formidable had been the single Refor-
mers before the Reformation, who, during the later
Middle Ages, had in different quarters lifted up their
voices against the corruptions in doctrine and in prac-
tice of their time, often with the foremost Universities
to back the protest which they raised. But here too
the contrast was remarkable between the violent re-
volt of the first half of the fifteenth century and the
submissive acquiescence of the second. These also had
passed away, leaving, as might seem, no successors
behind them. Of Wiclif I have already spoken at
large, and of Hus. John Wessel, of Groningen, —
Lux Mundi his admirers called him, but his enemies,
matching one exaggeration with another, Mdgister
ContradicHonum, — ^protected by powerful friends, had
died in a peaceful old age (1489). John Von Wesel,
often confounded with one who is so nearly his name-
sake, uttered some brave words against Indulgences,
but had closed his days in confinement (1482) ; having

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THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

429

only by a timely retractation escaped the fiery doom
to which his writings were delivered. Savonarola (b.
1452, d. 1498), the fervent Dominican of Florence,
would fain have reformed the State no less than the
Church ; but his grand work, through this error and
through the mingling of his own apocalyptic fancies
with the word of God, — as if those were of equal au-
thority with this, — ^had early made shipwreck ; and he
had fallen only too easy a victim to the hatred of the
wickedness among the Popes, namely Alexander VI.
(1498). Many more might be mentioned whose dead
bodies lay unburied " in the street of the great city
which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt :" and to
whom the voice from heaven, " Come up hither,'* had
not yet been spoken.

The only Theology in which there dwelt any origi-
nality and power, that of the Mystics, if it did not take
upon it the defence of the Papacy and its pretensions,
as the Scholastic had done, yet evinced no hostility,
was quite content that these should stand.

But, however fair might be the outward show and
semblance of things, there lurked danger behind, and
this danger was everywhere. The embitterment of
men's spirits against die Church arid her whole man-
ner of acting was widely spread and intense. Western
Europe had outgrown its minority, and felt that it had
outgrown it That long course of discipline by pre-
cept and prohibition, to which untutored races newly
brought within the pale of the Church, German and
Slavonic and others, had been submitted, may have
been necessary, might very ill have been spared ; but
it was not the less felt as a vexatious and meddling

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THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

tyranny now that these races were conscious of having
arrived at full age, and entered into the liberties which
belonged to this. The rudimentary Christianity, the
" elements of this world," to which they had been sub-
ject so long, had served in their time as a "schoolmas-
ter to bring them to Christ;" and the education through
which they had passed, though rather of divine suffer-
ance than of divine appointment, and though mixed
with much that was of the earth, bore a certain re-
semblance to that which the earlier people of God had
gone through, while they too were under tutors and
governors. But such^a condition of things, to justify
its existence, must be merely transitional. Rome,
however, was determined that the bondage should be
eternal; that the children, not any longer in their non-
age, should be treated as children to the end. Reli-
gion may be, as our old poet has so grandly put it,
" Mother of form and fear;" yet, if true Religion, she
proves in, due time mother of far fairer things than
these^ To her belongs not form only, but also spirit ;
not fear only, but also love. This was the truth which
they whom it most concerned that they should see it,
were resolved not to see nor understand.

Much else too there was which the rulers of the
Church either could not see, or would not. Grey hairs
were upon her, and she knew it not In manifold ways
strength had departed from her, and gone over to the
side of her adversaries; while weakness, wearing in-
deed still the treacherous semblance of strength, was
all which remained to her. Thus, what apparendy
could have been more triumphant than the issue of
the struggle with the Councils? These, which had
been the objects once of so much hope and so much

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THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION. 431

fear, had utterly failed in securing any liberties for the
Church, or in compelling a gradual and peaceable
amendment of things therein which we^e amiss ; but
they had not the less left a profound impression on
the heart and conscience of Christendom. Of this,
however, I have spoken already.

The Monastic Houses had been at one time so
many fortresses in every land^ with the monks a gar-
rison on whose fidelity the Church of Rome could
safely rely. It is difficult to estimate at too high a rate
their value to her. They brought her reputation ; they
furnished her with men trained for any work to which
she might send them. The Papacy indeed without
the Monk^ would have been impossible. The Orders
still existed, but fallen how far ! the oldest fallen the
farthest, but all of them fallen; and, if one thing they
hated,. hating to be reformed and resolved that they
would not be reformed; prepared to oppose the
fiercest resistance to every attempt to bring them
back to any strict, or indeed to any decent, manner
of living. He was a bold man who attempted, though
armed with the Papal authority, the visitation of one
of their Houses ; he might have to carry it through at
the peril of his life. Of course there were honourable
exceptions: religious Houses in which a godly dis-
cipline was maintained ; but such, by the confession of
all, were exceptions.

It is the misfortune of institutions which are merely
human inventions, that after a while they overlive
themselves. Having contributed all which they were
capable of contributing to the Church's good or the
world's, they thenceforward cumber a ground which
they may have profited once. The reason of their

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432 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

existence having ceased, there is now one supreme
favour which they could confer, that is, not to seek to
exist any more* It is seldom, however, that those who
are bound up with institutions which have thus over-
past their time, see things in this light ; while yet the
falseness of their position, and the consciousness of
this falseness, which they cannot wholly escape, in
many ways tell injuriously upon them. The elevating
sense of a true vocation is gone. The sphere in which
a healthy activity is possible has grown much nar-
rower, or has quite disappeared; and under these
conditions it is almost inevitable that a rapid dete-
rioration, moral and spiritual, should follow. This
was eminendy the case with the older monastic bodies.
The decay of discipline, the dissolution of manners, the
dying out of all sense of corporate life, were every-
where making themselves visible to the eyes of all.

And if it fared thusi with them, it fared only a little
better with the Mendicants ; to whom good men and
great men had so fondly looked at their first appear-
ance, hailing this appearance as little short of a new
apocalypse. These too had betrayed the hopes thus
built upon them. They might not have fallen so far
as the earlier Orders had fallen ; but their fine gold
had become dim ; and the most hopeful, if any were
hopeful still, were compelled to own that the regene-
ration of the Church, its joyous return to the days of
its youth, its renewal of itself as an eagle, was not to
come to pass through them.

The Scholastic Philosophy, which was to have reared
new bulwarks for the faith, which had so long borne
the word for the Papal system and defended it before
the intellect of mankind, could not pretend to do this

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THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

433

with effect any more. Its alliance and moral support
invaluable once, was now rather an embarrassment
than a help. As a theology properly so called it had al-
most ceased to exist, and now only survived as a logic
and a metaphysic. Spinning all its threads out of its own
consciousness, and persuaded that there was nothing
which it could not spin from thence, it had absolutely
refused to learn anything from experience and history ;
and thus, wilfully closing one of the two main inlets
by which knowledge comes to man, it had never been
better than a Cyclops with a single eye : but even from
that one eye vision was now going or had gone.
Drier, harsher, thornier every day, it was the object of
ridicule to some, of a deep indignation to others, who
saw these husks set before the people instead of the
wholesome food of God's word. When too School-
men could be found to affirm that what was false in
philosophy might yet be true in theology, the reason
of their existence had manifesdy passed away ; for, in-
deed, what did they exist for unless to witness against
such a God-denying lie as this, and to assert the ulti-
mate identity of all truth ?

And worse than all the rest, or rather summing up
all other failures in one, the central institution of those
ages, the Papacy itself, had broken down. This at least
might have been demanded of an institution to which
every other hid been sacrificed, namely that it should
secure the unity of the Church. But what had been
the fa^t ? Again and again between rival claimants
to the highest throne upon earth, a power external
to both had been compelled to decide which was a
lying impostor, and which the divinely appointed judge
and dogmatist of mankind. Then too, in place of set-

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THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

ting herself at the head of the movement for a refor-
mation in head and members, with a frank confession
of past sins and shortcomings, now for a century and
a half Rome had made it her main business to baffle
and defeat every attempt at reformation : when weak,
to put off those who demanded this with illusory prom-
ises ; when strong, to punish, so far as her strength
reached, all who dared to suggest that any serious
amendment was required. What fatal success attend-
ed her in both these undertakings we have seen.

And then, while abuses were never rifer, while the
lives of the Clergy were never fuller of scandal, while
the Papal Court was never more venal, nor could less
endure the beating upon it of that fierce light which
leaves nothing hid, — the Invention of Printing (1440)
multiplied a thousandfold every voice which was raised
to proclaim an abuse or to denounce a corruption. A
Censorship and an Expurgatory Index might do some-
thing in the way of counteraction ; but much escaped
or defied the most vigilant control. And marching
hand in hand with this wondrous Invention there was
the Revival of Learning. This, among its other con-
sequences, bringing men into nearer acquaintance
with the early ages of the Church, made them aware
how little the primitive times had known of a Pope or
a Papacy in the later sense of these words ; how slow-
ly and by what gradual encroachments on the rights
of others, in the face of what remonstrances and of
what resistance, the system had grown up. It was easy
now to detect and expose the falsehood and forgery of
some of the most important documents on which the
Roman Canonists relied. The False Decretals are but
one example of these.

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435

It takes much to stir men to any earnest indignation
against evil, unless that evil in some way touches and
hurts themselves. But the enormous wickedness of
so many among those who, during the latter part of
the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth
century, filled the Papal tlirone, the immense contra-
diction between them and the office they held, patent
as this was to all, could not fail to rouse many thoughts.
This contradiction indeed was immense. Those in
the high places of the Church were as men who, having
escaped a huge danger, were prompted by the sense
of impunity to audacities of evil which they would not
have dreamed of before. Shame itself had perished.
What had been veiled, concealed, withdrawn out of
sight, was now openly transacted, avowed, and de-
fended. There had been bad Popes before ; but then,
alternating with these, there had been also good, —
men of personal godliness, who would fain have set
straight, if only they had possessed the insight and the
power, some part at least of all which they saw so
crooked around them. But regard the Popes from
Paul II. to Leo X. (i 464-1 521), including both ; what
less lovely spectacle has the Church or the world ever
presented ? " The very precursors of Antichrist " one
living at the time, and a faithful son of the Church,
does not fear to call some of these. I shall not enter
into particulars. There is much which I do not care
to tell, not a little which I could not tell.

And yet one signal difference between these and
such as went before them, and that for the worse, I
cannot forbear to note. Boniface VIII., Pius II., with
others whom I might name, were not model Popes, nor
models in any way. For all this they had some

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436 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

thought of Christendom as a whole, took somq sort of
oversight of it as a kingdom ; and if they abused their
grand position, yet did not miss or ignore it altogether.
But the men who sat on the Papal throne immediately
before the Reformation — their horizon was limited to
the pettiest and paltriest politics of Italy. The chief
value which their office possessed lay now in the op-
portunity which it offered to snatch some worldly ad-
vantage for the family which they were founding, or at
best to enlarge the so-called Patrimony of St Peter.
Who that knows anything of Italian history during the
century before the Reformation will deny jhat for ob-
jects such as these they schemed, intrigued, struck al-
liances and broke them, made war and made peace,
conspired, betrayed, confounded in worst disorder
things temporal and things spiritual to the infinite dis-
honour and degradation of both, invoked the most
awful thunders of heaven to do the most unworthy
work upon earth ?

Such were some of the moral aspects of Western
Christendom on the Eve of the Reformation. A few
more words before we conclude. I have endeavoured
in these Lectures to trace the manner in which all the
great events and tendencies of the medieval times
were leading up to the Reformation as to their goal ;
destined as that was to prove an unspeakable gain to
the whole Church, and not to one section of it only.
For indeed, while its full blessings belong to us who
made it fully our own, even those nations of Christen-
dom which, after a brief hesitation, put it back from
them, could not escape the gains of it altogether.
Hard words are often spoken of it by those who then

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THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION,

437

refused it — some of these, it may be, just, not a few
unjust Unjustest of all are these words, where the
things we are reproached with having lost or let go, it
was Rome herself who, by her long abuse of them,
tempted the Reformers in a not unnatural indignation
to cast away. Certainly I do not consent with those
who set out with this maxim, " The farther from Rome
the nearer to the truth ;" — but I can understand them:
and whatever fault may cling to this violent and exag-
gerated reaction, lies not wholly at their doors, but in
part assuredly at hers who had done so much to pro-
voke it. Thus, to take an example, the whole subject
of the Intermediate State, beginning with our Lord's
Descent into Hades, is one which the theology of the
Reformation has almost shrunk from touching ; and
this because of the terrible mischiefs which had at-
tached themselves to the Romish doctrine of Purga-
tory. What have been the losses hence ensuing may<
be guessed, but not fully measured, by the loud and
angry denials that there has been any loss at all,
which will instantly follow any assertion like that
which I just have made.

But let there be in these reproaches which ^re thus
cast upon us what amount of truth there may, such as
utter them owe an incalculable debt to that which they
reproach. Where would the Roman Catholic Church
be now, except for the great searchings of heart, the
diligent setting of her house in order, the strengthen-
ing of the things that remained, which all by this visible
judgment-act were forced upon her? Matters had
come to such a pass, ills had become so inveterate,
that it was no more possible for her, of a free sponta-
neous impulse, to have reformed herself, than for a

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438 THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

man to perform a painful surgical operation on his
own body. This which may be done for him, he can-
not do for himself. Where would now be her St.
Teresa, her Philip Neri, her Charles Borromeo, her
Francis Xavier, her Francis of Sales, at this day her
just blazon and boast ? They were not the fruit which
the Church of Alexander VL, of Julius II,, of Leo X.,
was in the way to bear, or would have ever borne.
Whatever Rome can boast, — and this is much,— of the
grander forms of piety and devotion during the last
three hundred years, she owes to the mighty reaction
and revival of spiritual life in the sixteenth century,
forced upon her, as I would again repeat, by the
Reformation ; by the aid of which reaction and revival
she encountered and put some bounds to the ad-
vancing: wave that at one time threatened to sub-
merge her altogether — nay more than this, recovered
much tiiat for a while appeared to be lost to her for
ever.

But these reproaches do not reach us from that
quarter only. We too ourselves are sometimes
tempted to say, and more often to think, that on those
labour-pangs of so many centuries there might have
followed a more glorious birth than any that we
actually behold ; for who among us, looking round on
the Reformed Christendom which now is, will affirm that
it has fulfilled the expectations that might have been
cherished once ? What remains but to acknowledge
and to accept the fact with which in my first Lecture I
started, and with which in this last I conclude ; namely
that everything here, in this world of imperfections, is
more or less a disappointment and a failure ; that this
law of shortcoming, being universal, does not exclude

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THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.

439

the highest and the best ; and that so it will continue
until HE comes who shall make all things new, the
Restorer and the Reformer of all. Much at that
period to which I have brought you, and where I
pause, through the sin and impatience of men was
ill-done, undone or overdone. Let us own it freely ;
but not the less freely declare that in what the Refor-
mation rid us of, in what it obtained for us, in all that
would have been impossible without it, there is matter
for everlasting thanksgiving. "Thou sentest a gra-
cious rain upon thine inheritance, and refreshedst it
when it was weary."

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INDEX.

ABELARD. 196. 210
Adrian IV., Pope, 177
Aidan. 36

Albertus Magnus, 201
Albigenses, 2165^^.
Alexander III., Pope, 178
Alexander V.. Pope, 295
Alexander VI., Pope, 408, 429
Alfred the Great, 44
Amalrich of Bena, 221
Amandus, 62

Anglo-Saxon Christianity, 42
Anselm, Archbishop, 007, 276
Ansgar, 73
Antipopes, 291
Appeals to Rome, 1 56, 348
Aquinas, Thomas, 202, 265
Architecture, Christian, 398
Aristotle, 263, 276
Arnold of Brescia, 171
Art, Christian, 89. 395 sqq,
Arundel, Archbishop, 316
Augustine, Archbishop, 30

BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, 277
sqq.
Basilicas, 398
Basle, Council of, 300, 333
Baxter quoted, 217
Becket, Archbishop, 169
Beguines. 218, 364
Benedict XI., Pope, 284
Berengar, 191 sqq,
Bernard, St., no, 140, 223, 267, 278 ;
Bertholdt, 419
Bessarion, 384

Bible, Wiclifs translation of, 310
Biblicists, 272
Biel, 275
Bohemia, 321

Boniface VIII., Pope, 281, 341, 398
Boniface, Apostle of Germany, 66
sqq.

Brethren of the Common Life, 363

Brethren of the Free Spirit, 221

British Church, xz

Bryce c^uoted, 184

Bulgarians, 75

Byzantine Architecture, 400

Byzantine Emperors, 24, 92

CiELESTIN III., Pope, 179
Calixtines,^33
Canonization, \6\
Canossa, 130
Carmelites, 109
Caroline Books, 98
Carthusians, no
Cathari, 217

Celibacy of the Cler^, 121
Celtic missions and missionaries, 36,

Cerularius, 376

Chalcedon, Council of, 25

Charles of Anjou, 184

Charles the Great, 1 17

Charles Martel, 79

Chateaubriand, 114

Chaucer, 240

Chesterfield, Lord, 117

Church History, modes of writing,

t sqq.
Church History, its divisions, 14
Cistercians, no
Clement V., Pope, 284
Clement VI., Pope, 286, 347
Cloister Schools, 85
Cluniy, 108, 119
Cobnam, Lord, 318
Coleridge, 195, 202
Colum^tnus, 62
Compacts of Basle, 335
Concilia or Conciliabula, 304
Concomitance, 332
Conrad III., Emperor, 130
Conradin, 184

441

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442

INDEX.

Constance, Council of, 298

Constance, Treaty of, 170

Constantia, 176

Constantine Copronymus, 97

Constantinople, 370, 395

Conversions by force, 71

Councils: Sardica, 155; Second of
Nicsea, 98; Fourth Lateran, 166:
of Lyons, 378; of Pisa, 294; of
Constance, 290; of Basle, 293; of
Florence, 378

Councils of the West, how far a
failure, 302

Crozier and Ring, Investiture by, 1 24

Crusades, 132 sqq,^ 280

*'Cur Deus Homo?*' 20»

Cyril, Greek monk, 75

D'AILLY, Cardinal, 204
Damiani, Cardinal, 130
Danes, their ravages, 74
Dante, 152, 180, 280
Decretals, 156
Dominic, St, 240
Dominicans, 242, 267
Duns Scotus, 267
Dunstan, 121

EASTER, ways of calculating, 33
Eckart, 355 sqq,
Edwin, King of Northumbria, 34
Eligius, 62

Erasmus, 318, 391 sqq,
Eucharistic controversies, 186 sqq.
Eugenius III., Pope, 278
Eugenius IV., Pope, 300
** Everlasting Gospel,** 219
Expectancies, 338

FELIX v., Antipope, 302
Feudal system, 125
Ficinus. 386
Flagellants, 338
Francis of Assissi, 233 sqq,
Franciscans, 219, 267
Franks, 78

Frederick Barbarossa, 141, 175
Frederick II., Emperor, 1 53,179^^^.
Freeman quoted, 400, 403
*' Friends of God," 363
Fuller quoted, 1 12, 205

pALLUS, 62

V J Germany, conversion of, 60 $qq.

Gerson, 294

Gibbon^ 83

Gift of Constantine, 80

Godfrey of Bouillon, 140

Gothic Architecture, 403

Greek ^Church, 366 sqq,

Greek ' Doctors unknown in the

West, 371
Gregory I., Pope, 23 sqq.,, 120, 371
Gregory VII., rope, 119 sqq.y 193
Gregory IX., Pope, 184, 225
Gregory XL, Pope, 287
GrostSte, Bishop, 237, 341

HALES, Alexander, 267, 364
Heeren quoted, 386
Heliand, 72

Henry II., King of England, 169
Henry IV., Emperor, 128
Henry VI., Emperor, 170
Henry VII., Emperor, 185
Heresies of East and West. 368
Hildebrand; see Gregory VII.
Hincmar, 190
Hobbes quoted, 153
Hohenstaufen, House of, 16S sqq^
Holy Roman Empire, ']^ sqq,
Honorius I., Pope, 158
Honorius III., Pope, 181, 231
Hugh of St. Victor, 212
Humanists, 387
Hus, 322 sqq.

ICONOCLASTS, 89 sqq.

1 " Imitation of Cnrist,** 364

Immaculate Conception, 2^7

Indulgences, 342, 421

Innocent III., Pope, 164. 223, 369

Inquisition, 223, 230

Intermediate State, doctrine of, 437

Interregnum, the Long, 185

Investitures, struggle of the, 124

Irene, Empress, 82

Isl&m, 46 sqq., 146

JEROME of Prague, 323. 332
Jerusalem, 132, 141
Jews burnt in Spain, 226
Joachim of Floris, 220
John XXII., Pope, 221. 287
John XXIIL, Pope, 297

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INDEX,

443

^ bhn of Damascus, 94, 367^
] ohn of Viccnza, 410
\ ubilcc, Year of, 340
Julius II., Pope, 419

LACORDAIRE. 242
Lanfranc, 105, 207
Latin Doctors unicnown in the Blast,

271
Latin Empire in the East, 376
Legnano, oattle of ( 1 1 76), 1 79
Leo the Isaurian, 91
Leo III. Pope, 82
Leo IX., Pope, 193, 196
Leo X., Po^, 385
Lewis IV., Emperor, 286
Lewis IX.. King of France, 144
Libertine sects. 221
Lollards, 315
Lombard League, 176
Lombard, Peter, 272
Lombards, 24, ^^
Luther, 193, 275, 363

MACULISTS. 267
Madgeburg Centuriators, 5
Mahomet, 47 sqq,
Manichaean Sects, 216
Mapes, Walter, 252
Marsilio of Padua, 288
Martin I., Pope, 24
Martin V., Pope. 298
Mary, Blessed Virgin, 416 sqq.
Maximus, Confessor, 367
"Men of Understanding,** 221
Mendicants, 228 sqq.\ their fall,

232, 422
Methodius, 75
Metrophanes, 379
Milan. 122, 179

Milman quoted, 44, 82, loi, 168
Monasticism, 102 sqq,, 417
Mongols, 182
Montaigne quoted, 382
Montalembert, 114
Moors, 53

Moravian Brethren, J35
More, Henry, quoted. 409
More, Sir Thomas, 3^
Mystical Theology, its weakness,

Mystics, German. 352 sqq.
Mystics, Romanic, 212

NATIONALITIES, repressed by
Rome. 278
Neander, 7, 288, 364
Nicolaitans, 122
Nicolas I., Pope, 87, 157
Nicolas of Basle, 364
Nominalists, 268, 288
Normans. 42

OCCAM, 202, 271, 289
Otto I., Emperor, 118, 413
Otto III., Emperor, 152, 179

PINTING, Christian, 397
Papacy, its good, 1 58 ; its evil,
161. 422 ; failure of its moral
supports, 281, 413
Paris, University of, 294
Paschal II., Pope, 126
Paschasius Radbert, 189
Patriarchs, Eastern, 151
Penda, 56
Pepin, 79

Peter the Hermit. 134
Petrarch, 286
Philip Augustus, 141, 165
Philip the Fair, 282
Pisa, Council of, 294 sqq.
Pius II., Pope. I44» 305. 34o
Poor Men of Lyons, 252
Poor Priests of Wiclif, 31 5
Prague, University of, J22
Preachers in the Middle Ages, 418
Printing, Invention of, 16, 433
I'rocession of the Holy Ghost, 375
Provisions, 338
Prussians, conversion ot 76
Purgatory, 344» 421
Purvey, John, 310, 317

RABANUS MAURUS, 191
Ratherius, 190
Ratramn, 191
Realists, 268
Reformation, 421
Reformers before the Reformation,

428
Remi^us, 190
Renaissance, 395

Revival of Learning, 382 sqq.y 433
Rodolph of Hapsburg, 185
Romanesque Architecture, 403

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444

INDEX.

Rome, ties^then and Christian, 152

sqq.
Roscelm, 271
Russia, conversion of, 379
Ruysbroek, 359

SACRAMENTS. 198
Sardica, Council of 155
Saxons, conversion of, 69
Scandinavia, conversion of, (nj
Schism of the West, 290 sqq,^ 31 1
Scholastic Philosophy, 201, 415, 433
Scotists, 267

Scotus Erigena, 191, 207
Scripture neglected, 272
Sculpture, Christian, 313
Sects of the Middle Ages, 213x^7^

427
Severinus, 61
Shirley quoted, 202
Sigismund, Emperor, 298, 326
Simony, 132, 337
Sismondi on Frederick Barbarossa,

176
Sixtus IV.. Pope, 344
Slavonic tribes, conversion of. 74
St Sophia, church of, 379, 398
St. Victor, monastry of, 212
Stigmata, 241
Supererogation, works of, 346

TABORITES, 333
Tauler, 359
Templars, Knight, 138, 285
Teutonic Knights, 75
Theodora, Empress, 98

Theodore of Tarsus, 39
Theodore, Abbot, 95
•* Theologia Germanica,** 363
Thesaurus Meritorum, 345
Thomas i Kempis, 364
Thomists, 266
Toulouse, 221
Trinitarians, 424
'* Truce of God," 425

U NAM SANCTAM,Bull so called,
282
Unitas Fratrum, 335
Urban II., Pope, 135, 137
Urban VL, Pope, 294, 347
Utraquists, 333

GTLIUS, 158
Vladimir, 380

WALDENSES, 226. 248 326
Waldo, Peter, 251
Wends, 75

Wenrel, King of Bohemia, 332
Wesel, John von, 428
Wessel. John, 428
Whitby, Council of, 37
Wiclif, 3o6x^^., 317
Wilfrid, Archbishop, 39
Willibrord, 62
Worms, Concordat of, 127

^ISKA, 332

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